#flicker light in nuke

[mediumgayitalian]

"She's in the bathroom," Austin blurts, as soon as his brother's tall form slips through the soundproofed door.

And, like.

She could be.

Austin wouldn't know. He hasn't seen Kayla since she opened her violin case, yawned, rocked back on her heels, and climbed out the window.

But who knows. Maybe she's been in the washroom for the last three hours. Camp food is tricky. Shit happens, literally. Sometimes devastatingly so.

"No, she is not," Will snorts, and Austin knows the game is up.

But he's not a snitch, so.

"She's playing hooky with Julia in a tree somewhere," Will says wryly, idly brushing Austin's shoulders as he walks past. "She gets pissy every time I bring it up, but I have it on good authority that they are not simply talking up there." There's a shuffling noise, the scrape of a chair against the floor. Austin watches, out of the corner of his eye, as he pretends to adjust his reed; Will tucks himself in a chair in the corner of the small music room, one leg brough up and held against his chest. Cheek resting against his knee.

Tense.

Austin is careful not to say anything.

"Good for her, honestly. Lord knows I was making worse decisions at that age. Mainly Cecil."

He can't help the snicker, pulling off the mouthpiece before he wrecks something. The lamps flicker, ever so slightly, as Will grins, cheeks just barely red.

"You're distracting me," Austin chides, even though he isn't. Will had startled him, when he slipped inside; Austin had glanced to the clock mounted on the ceiling (no, he doesn't know why, other than camp is just Like This, always) and realized, with a grimace, that he'd been staring at nothing for a full forty minutes. "I'm trying to write."

But Will takes him serious, smile dropping.

"Sorry, sorry."

Austin nods, once. Brings the mouthpiece to his teeth. His reed is dry. He needs to soak it. Professionals would put it in a glass of water but it's -- it's inefficient, is what it is. He's got a mouth right there. He makes spit for free. It's fine. It's fine.

It goes no bueno, his songwriting. To his expectation. He's been stuck for the better part of a week, every sound sad and dull or, worse, derivative. He has neglected his Youtube account out of shame. The comments keep piling up. He has talked himself down from deleting the entire channel and then also blowing up the website in shame. Mostly because he doesn't quite know how to nuke a website. But also because, well. Drama. He knows he leans towards it. Father's curse, et cetera, et cetera.

He can feel his brother's eyes on him.

This is not unusual. Nor is it particularly stressful. Austin doesn't mind an audience, never has. But he's human, and he got antsy on stage as a kid, antsier performing in the Lake's cramped living room, in front of busy, overworked but supportive mothers, bored cousins, narrowed-eye grandparents. There's no audience more critical than family.

Will isn't critical. Not by a long shot.

And Will's eyes are always on him, really. On Kayla. On Nico, on Cecil, on Lou Ellen, on Annabeth. Harley. Lacy. On the people whose files he has carefully tucked away in the bottom, locked drawer of the nurse's station in the infirmary, the siblings, the friends, the little ones. The risks. The people whose files he checks three times a day like clockwork, before every meal. Clinically. Biting a hole through his bottom lip as he mouths along the long-memorized notes, scrawls updates in overcrowded margins. Nico's been walking funny in the mornings, and when he exerts himself. Joint pain? and Keep eye on Lacy during CtF, flinching at noises, ASD maybe and Up late June 2nd. Annie had nightmare. Bad. Up meds.

He mumbles them in his sleep, sometimes. The notes. Austin wouldn't notice, except Will sleeps propped against the wall. So when Austin lies down on his top he can hear him, perfectly. And he's a light sleeper.

And he checks the notes sometimes, too. With the key he smuggled from around Will's neck one night, and paid Travis twelve dollars to copy without questions. He doesn't look at the medical stuff much. Not his business. But he can tell, based on how densely packed each new page is, when the spiraling will start.

"You can join me, if you want."

Will startles, even though Austin had been careful to speak quietly, casually; flinches his arms and drops his leg to the floor, whipping up to stare so fast Austin can hear the crick of his neck.

Austin rolls his shoulders, slow and cool.

"You only ever watch."

"I only -- can watch."

Will says it quick, swallowing heavy. In that way he does, when he wants to hide the words. When he wants to lie, but can't.

"No? Everyone is allowed to play."

"Physically, I mean. I -- can't play." He laughs, and it is self-deprecating and mean. "Can't carry a tune worth a damn, hun."

Austin tries not to react. Hun. He wishes Kayla were here, and mentally calls her back out of her make-out tree -- that is what they get, when Will wrings his hands. Gnaws at his lip. Picks at his bandages. It is dolly, usually, or even more often, dork ass or twerp or, most lovingly, and most applicable, brat.

But he calls them hun when he is emulating his mother. When his own words get tangled up in between his chest and his throat and he blurts out whatever else he has memorized over the years, whatever other truth he can scrounge up instead. Whoever he can parrot.

"'Course you can play," Austin says instead, keeping his voice light. He pulls the padded strap off his neck, ignoring Will's rapidly shaking head, and tugs it over poufy blond curls, pressing brass onto scarred palms. Austin has seen him hold 13 mol hydrochloric acid with less wariness. "Just takes practice."

Will flounders as Austin swaps out his mouthpiece, tightening the ligature over a new -- soaked properly this time, see, he's a real musician -- reed. Austin lets him. He imagines two tiny little Wills battling in his brain: one, haughty and stood straight, lecturing on practice makes improvement, the other tense and twitchy and convinced he can do nothing right. He hopes haughty Will wins. Which is saying something, because haughty Will drives him nuts.

"I -- can't," Will settles on eventually, and then slumps miserably. He reaches up one hand -- having carefully checked the saxophone was steady in the other -- and pointedly tucks his hair behind his head. "I, uh. Can't hear when I'm flat as a board." He meets Austin's eyes and smiles, shaky, thin. "Some child of Apollo, huh."

Austin is already shaking his head, frowning, because it's a mean thing to say, and not just to himself. If another Deaf kid walked into camp right this second, shining sun blinking above him, Will would never dream of saying something so dismissive.

"Not fair," says Austin quietly. "Most famous composer in the Western world was Deaf, Will."

"...True." He fiddles with the key guard. "I'm no Beethoven, though. I've...tried, especially when I was a kid. Used to play the guitar and I knew all the fingerings but people would, you know." His ears flush. "Mom's roadies would laugh when I played. And Lee and Diana and the others musta tried to get me in here a dozen times a week, but it was just a disaster. I couldn't keep up and I couldn't tell what I was doing wrong." He shrugs. "Is what it is. I should stick to my strengths, anyway."

"Strengths are what you work on."

"I have worked on it, Austin." There is the first crack of frustration in his tone, the tightening of his hand on the neck of the sax and the twitch of his soft jaw. He takes a minute, swallowing heavy, before sighing, forcing his muscles to relax. Forcing a small, tight smile. "I promise you I have worked and worked and worked on it, buddy. I still -- I dunno, it's still all off. Tuners blink red and nothing ever comes out right. It's fine. I should let you practice, anyway, I just came to watch --"

Austin holds firm to his shoulder, pressing him back to the chair. Wil is stronger than him -- broader, taller -- and could push away. Austin won't even hold him back if he does. His eyes flick to Austin, and then to the door. He knows this.

But he didn't come just to watch. Because he never does. Because he hates coming in here at all, hates to stand by the door and itch at his shoulders and look longingly at shining brass he's convinced himself he's not allowed to touch. He watches their every performance and even joins in on guitar, when he's feeling brave, or when there aren't many foreign eyes to watch him stumble. But he schedules a shift in the infirmary every music block every day without fail, and waits outside to take them to dinner, to their next activity. Looks at his feet when they file out, Kayla first, humming, bopping her head; Austin behind her, locking the door. Guiding the little kids out, in the summers.

Watching him twitch.

"Sound hits in more than one place," Austin says quietly. "You can feel it, you know."

Will says nothing. Looks resolutely forward, hands deceptively loose around the instrument. Slowly, Austin leans forward, swapping their mouthpieces again. Tilting the neck of the saxophone so Will is holding the body, still, but Austin squishes in next to him, bending awkwardly but holding fast, familiar. He can feel Will holding his breath.

"Close your eyes," Austin mumbles around the reed. He moves Will's fingers on the body, pressing down the right keys. "Just -- focus on the buzz in your hands, okay?"

Slowly, Will nods.

Inhaling slow, Austin pauses, considering. And then he blows the first note, and blows it steady, clear. Flat, because it's supposed to be, in this key, but bang on in tune. Concert C.

"You feel that?"

Will just shrugs.

"Okay, I'm gonna play sharp, now. Same note. Just -- faster, waves a little closer together."

He doesn't wait for Will's nod. He knows how sound works. Instead he just pulls out the mouthpiece, so it's barely balancing on the greased cork, and blows the same note, doesn't change Will's hands on the buttons.

It's sharp, alright. Austin fights back a wince.

But beside him, he can feel Will still. Watches the bounce of his leg freeze, watch his breathing uptick.

"Play it again," he asks. "Please. Uh, not sharp, then sharp."

Austin nods, then does. He plays it a little louder, this time, too, with more force, and is rewarded when Will laughs -- a small, bewildered thing, and when Austin looks over he is wide-eyed, eyes sparkling blue, jaw dropped and freckles glittering.

"I felt it!"

Austin grins. "Try this."

He adjust, plays the normal note again. Then pushes the mouthpiece in as flat as it will go, lowers his eyebrows for good measure. Honks. And it sounds awful, even worse than the sharp, but it is worth it for the pure glee in his older brother's giggle, the straight jut in his spine that Austin recognizes -- he can feel the phantom zip of electricity up his own back because he knows that feeling, the feeling of finally getting it. Of laboring over a piece for more hours than there are notes and hardly feeling the muscles on your face, of pushing back tears and fighting the urge to launch five thousand dollars worth of expensive tubing and keys at the wall with all your strength, promising yourself: one more time.

And then getting it, that time.

Feeling the practice really start.

It's humbling, to see it on someone else. To see it on someone who has been trying so desperately for as long as Austin has known him, longer; there is pure, genuine joy on his big brother's face. Not amusement, not satisfaction, not something quietly pleased but something bright and blue and electric, like neon lights on the fourth of July, like the cracking relief of a first loose tooth. Will laughs that snorting, too-bright laugh again, lamps flickering wildly, and asks Austin to play it again. And again.

Austin indulges him, even though his embouchure hurts something smarting; he plays another concert C, and then a D, and then all the way up a scale, playing half-steps, wholes, in-between that don't have names. And Will calls them all out, accurately, finally able to put all the theory he's memorized year after year to use. Finally able to feel what it means to be off-key. To hit the wrong note.

To hit the right one.

They miss dinner. Will doesn't hear the horn and Austin doesn't bother telling him. He watches, instead, Will slide his own mouthpiece on the saxophone and honk his heart out -- not music, not yet, but sound, and good sound, and isn't that step one. Wrong but strong. Stronger than he's ever been, and glowing for it, veins lighting up like glowsticks.

Austin lets him play until sundown. And the Sun, too, lingers, waiting to relish in the endless giggles between every successful blow of his horn.

It's music to his ears.

-- -- --

@willsolaceweek day 2 -- siblings

[deja-you]

Starling: Act I

bucky barnes x reader

masterlist | series masterlist | next part

word count: 1.7k

summary: You don’t expect to befriend your neighbor in apartment 3B. Not the one who only speaks in dry observations and quiet glances. Not the one who watches you like he’s memorizing your escape routes.

A/N: hi! So I've been inactive for years and trying to remember how to do this all again. This is my very first time writing for this fandom so this is a big change for me! I would welcome any tips or advice or literally anything. But this is basically going to be a five part series? I'll probably be doing a lot of format changing and all that soon.

You moved into the apartment two months ago and still haven’t figured out whether the building is sketchy or charming. Maybe both. Probably both. It’s old. Radiators don’t work the way they’re supposed to, floorboards creak in some kind of Morse code, but your neighbors mostly mind their own business, unless they’re Mr. Keller. He’s always looking for a reason to report you for a noise complaint even though it's his bird that is constantly shouting threats of getting you arrested. 

It’s the right amount of shady. Just the kind of place where nobody questions why you’re doing laundry at 2:47 a.m., and if they do, they’re probably running from something, too. 

You’re jiggling the coin slot on the washing machine with a bobby pin you keep tucked in your sleeve. You’ve got the motion down to muscle memory. The trick is gentle pressure and patience–things you learned the hard way. The washer clicks open. 

The door creaks behind you.

You don’t turn around immediately. Whoever it is walks soft, which means they’re either dangerous or polite. Maybe both. You bobby pin back into your sleeve and keep your tone light and casual.

“Almost done. There’s a dryer open if you want it.” 

You’re met with silence. Then:

“That’s illegal, you know.”

“So is jaywalking,” you shrug.

You pause, hand still on the machine’s lid, glancing over your shoulder. He’s leaning against the doorframe, arms crossed like it’s instinct. Gloved on one side. You catch the glint of metal peeking out from the other. Left hand. Of course.

You know who he is. Of course you do. But you’ve gotten good at pretending you don’t recognize ghosts when they show up in the flesh. 

He doesn’t smile, doesn’t move. He just stares like he’s trying to figure out if you’re dangerous or just disrespectful. Maybe both. 

You break the silence.

“It’s not a crime if no one sees it.”

He raises an eyebrow at your faulty logic.

“I saw it.”

“What, you gonna report me to the landlord?”

“Mr. Keller would love that.”

“Yeah. Well. Mr. Keller also things his parrot’s a government spy, so I’m not exactly quaking.”

There’s a small flicker in his expression. An almost smile. Almost. He still hasn’t moved from his position on the wall.

You turn back to the washer and finish loading it before snapping the lid down and dusting off your hands. When you walk past him, your shoulder brushes the air between you. You turn back briefly to get one more quip in.

“Thanks for the legal advice, Barnes.”

His brow furrows slightly. “Didn’t give any.”

“Sure you did.”

You give him a small, coy smile and leave the room without looking back. You can feel his eyes on you as you make your way to the stairwell.

- 

It’s been a few weeks since your interaction with Bucky Barnes a.k.a. The Winter Soldier a.k.a. Your neighbor in apartment 3B. 

The apartment is too quiet to sleep. Too many locks on the door, not enough on your mind. You throw on a hoodie over sweats, lace up your boots without tying them, and slip into the hallway like you’ve done a hundred times before. You grab your to-go cup of tea–the one you’ve nuked twice but never actually drank. 

The stairwell is cool and dim, lit by one ceiling light that flickers like it’s on its last life. 

You freeze halfway down the first flight. He’s already there.

Sitting on the bottom step, hoodie up, elbows on his knees. His hetal hand hangs loose between them, glinting when the flickering light catches the plating. He’s not asleep, but somewhere else entirely. You hesitate.

Then, quietly, you descend the rest of the stairs and sit two steps above him. Not beside him. Just…near. 

Neither of you say anything at first. You set your cup by your feet, it clinks softly against the concrete. He doesn’t respond. 

For a minute, there’s nothing but the soft humming of the building. Pipes ticking. A TV murmuring through the walls. The buzz of the light overhead. 

Then:

“You always this dramatic, Barnes?”

Silence. You think he’s not going to respond. But then he turns his head slightly to look at you.

“Only when I’m awake.” 

You nod as if this makes sense. It does. “Must be exhausting.” 

“Yeah,” he says softly. 

Another beat of silence.

“You got someone looking for you?”

The question is blunt. Between your current interaction and the brief one in the laundry room, Bucky Barnes has picked up that you’re running… or hiding from something. Someone. You don’t know if there’s something obvious you’ve done to give it away, or if it's just the fact that Bucky could recognize someone on the run from miles away. He should be able to. He’s spent too much of his life on the run himself. 

You don’t look at him when you answer.

“Not anymore. Not really.” 

He nods slowly. He understands. 

Then quieter:

“You got someone looking out for you?”

You don’t answer. The light flickers again. You find your hands grabbing fistfuls of your hoodie, knuckles white. 

He doesn’t press. He just breathes out slowly, leans back against the wall behind him, and shifts slightly like he’s settling in to keep watch–just for a while. He decides then and there that he’ll look out for you. Whether you want him to or not. 

You stare down at your cold tea, still not drinking it. 

-

You’re headed back from a bodega run that wasn’t about groceries so much as getting out of your head. It’s late—later than usual—but the building’s always quiet at this hour. You like it that way.

Except this time, the stairwell isn’t empty.

You spot him instantly, crouched on the landing like he belongs to the shadows. Hoodie up, shoulders tense. Left hand dangling loosely over his knee. The other—

Split knuckles. Blood dark across his skin, pooled in the creases. There’s some on his jaw, too.

You stop halfway down the stairs and exhale through your nose.

“You got a thing for this spot, or is it just a coincidence I keep finding you here?”

He doesn’t answer. Just shifts his jaw and glances away like the wall’s got something important to say.

You sigh, head back up the stairs, and return thirty seconds later with your beat-up first aid kit from under the kitchen sink.

“Don’t move.”

“I’m fine.”

“I’m sure you are. But that hand isn’t.”

You drop to a crouch beside him, ignoring the stiff way he goes still. You pop open the kit, flick the latch like you’ve done it a thousand times, and pull out a packet of antiseptic wipes.

He doesn’t protest again. Just watches.

“You throw a punch or catch one?”

“Little of both.”

“You win?”

“...Define winning.”

You huff a quiet laugh and start cleaning the blood. The cut’s deeper than it looked, but you don’t flinch, even when the antiseptic hits raw skin and he tenses under your touch. He doesn’t make a sound.

You don’t ask what happened. He doesn’t offer. It’s better that way.

You tape the knuckle gently, fingers brushing over his calluses, and you catch him watching you—not the kind of stare people give when they’re sizing you up, but the kind they give when they’re trying to remember the last time someone touched them like this.

When you’re finished, you close the kit, set it aside, and wipe your palms on your sweats.

“You should put ice on it.”

“Don’t like the cold.”

“That’s rich, Frosty.”

That gets the barest twitch at the corner of his mouth. Not quite a smile, but closer than anything you’ve seen from him.

“You always talk this much?”

You sit back on your heels and arch a brow.

“Only when I’m patching up super-soldiers who loiter in my stairwell.”

“I wasn’t loitering. And we share a stairwell.”

“You were brooding. Bleeding and brooding. It’s a step up.”

He grunts—noncommittal—and leans back against the wall. The tension in his shoulders has eased. Just slightly.

“Thanks.”

You nod.

Neither of you moves for a moment. 

“Next time,” you say, standing and grabbing the kit, “try to win in a way that doesn’t involve blood loss.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.”

You start back up the stairs.

“Hey,” he calls after you, voice low.

You turn.

“You didn’t ask.”

“About what?”

“Why.”

You shrug. “Didn’t need to.”

And you leave him there—alone, but not as alone as before.

-

The city is quieter than usual tonight.

No sirens. No arguments echoing off brick. Just the distant hum of traffic and the occasional flutter of fabric on clotheslines no one ever takes down. Brooklyn pretending to sleep.

You’re out on the fire escape, perched like you belong there. Bare feet on cold iron, knees tucked under a blanket you meant to mend weeks ago. One hand wrapped around a beer bottle gone warm. The other resting loosely on your knee, fingers twitching every now and then like your nerves haven’t quite gotten the message that you’re safe.

You’re not sure what time it is. You don’t check.

The window creaks open behind you.

You don’t turn around.

You know it’s him.

Bucky steps out like the fire escape might bite him. Slow, deliberate. He’s in sweats and a t-shirt, hoodie slung over one shoulder. Barefoot. You catch the glint of the metal arm in your periphery.

He doesn’t sit. Just stands by the railing, hands braced on the edge, body angled slightly toward you.

“You always sit like that?”

Your eyes stay forward.

“Like what?”

“Like you’re gonna fly away if I say the wrong thing, Birdie.”

The word hits you in the chest like a second heartbeat.

You go still.

Your grip on the bottle tightens, not enough to crack it, but enough to feel the strain.

Your gaze drifts up—to the skyline, the lights, the dark slice of sky where stars are supposed to be but never quite are.

“Don’t call me that.”

Your voice is quiet. Not sharp. Not pleading. Just… tired.

He doesn’t apologize.

“Okay.”

A beat.

“But I’m gonna anyway.”

You let the silence stretch. The breeze carries the faint smell of fried food from a cart six blocks away. Somewhere down the street, someone yells at their dog in Russian.

You don’t correct him again.

Not because you like the nickname.

Not because you trust him.

But because, for the first time in a long time, someone called you something without expecting anything back.

You take a slow sip of your beer.

He stands there a while longer.

Just breathing beside you.

Not trying to fix anything.

Just staying.

[frickyeahfanfic]

〉the enemy of my enemy

chapter 2 - interrogation.

ethan hunt x f!reader 》 read chapter 1 here summary: You’re alone. Prague is the first real lead you’ve had on VANTAGE since everything went haywire—and you’re not about to let some fancy IMF agent ruin your shot. But when Ethan Hunt intercepts you mid-mission, everything spirals. word count: 1919 tags: enemies to lovers, slow burn warnings: none. a/n: sorry there's lots of dialogue. action is coming soon hehe

PRAGUE. UNKNOWN IMF SAFE HOUSE, 03:25 HOURS.

He takes a step forward, gun now flush against your chest. “Who are you?”

You look down at the pistol pressing into your sternum. “You’re not gonna shoot me.” 

Agent Ethan Hunt squints, his green eyes cutting into yours under the dim hotel room light. “Says who?”

“Says the fact that you won’t be able to decrypt that key. It’s impossible.”

His grip on the gun doesn’t flinch.

“Who are you?” he repeats.

“Why should I tell you?”

He shakes his head in frustration. “How could you possibly know what that chip has on it? Are you in it for money?” 

“Oh. You don’t know what’s on that chip, do you?” 

You can see the muscles tense in his jaw. That’s all the answer you need.

“Trust me,” you say softly, “there’s a reason you don’t know.”

“And how do you?” 

You look down at the pistol. “Okay, can we lose the gun now?” 

His eyes trail down your body. “Not until you can get rid of this.” 

Your heart stammers, but your face doesn’t flinch. Right, he meant the knives.

With a small sigh, you reach down slowly and let the blade strapped to your thigh clatter to the ground.

“Happy?” 

For the first time, a smile tugs at the corner of Hunt’s lips. 

“You’re not finished.”

He’s not an idiot. He’s actually a genius, a highly trained spy, assassin, asset, agent, mystery, whatever you want to call him. You reach into the side of your bra, and retrieve another knife, and then toss it aside. Only then does Hunt flick the safety and lower the weapon. 

“Finally.” You exhale, relaxing your shoulders slightly. “But if you were going to shoot me, you would’ve already.” 

He doesn't argue.  

“Who do you work for?” 

“No one.”

His brow lifts. “You’re alone? I don’t buy it.”

You shrug. “Wish I wasn’t, I’d have the chip in my possession if I had backup, like you do.” You nod your head to his left where you can see a thin wire hanging behind his ear. 

“Well it’s not yours to take.” He says.

“It’s not yours either. What does the IMF want with it, anyways?” 

Now that gets his attention. You read the flicker of surprise on his face and you lean in. 

“Yeah. I know who you are. I’ve done my research. But I guess I missed the part where you planned to show up tonight and ruin my op.” 

Hunt’s grip on the pistol tightens slightly.

“Don’t you have nukes to stop or something? The chip is… tiny, for someone like you.” 

He takes a step closer, his presence cold and quiet and utterly in control. “I’ll ask one more time, who are you? I don’t have time for games.” His voice is low now.

“No point in telling you my name. It won't show up in any database you got and I’m sure your comms team has already tried looking me up. I’m on my own. It’s been this way for a while now. And honestly, you’re making it a lot harder than it needs to be.”

A second of silence.  

“I don’t need your IMF protocols getting in my way. You’re just slowing me down.”

Hunt’s hand reaches up and loosens the tie on his neck. “What’s your goal?”

You daringly take a half step closer to him. “VANTAGE erased me. So I’m planning to erase them.” 

He sighs. Actually sighs. 

“And you’re really planning to do this, alone?” 

You wave a hand in the air. “Do you think I had a choice?”

Your eyes flick back up to his. “Besides, when I say I’m the only one who can decrypt that chip, it’s because I wrote the encryption.”

That lands. You can practically see the gears turning in his head. 

“You wrote the code?” It’s not disbelief, it’s reevaluation. 

A sweet fake-innocent smile spreads across your face. “Surpriiise,” you sing. “I’m not just some freelancer agent in a dress” 

“How do I know you’re not lying?” 

“Well I guess there’s only one way to find out,” you turn your head, looking over at the computer sitting on the coffee table. You noticed it when you first walked in. 

You can hear a vibrating noise coming from Hunt’s pocket, and he quickly grabs a phone out, answering it immediately. 

“Yeah. She’s with me here, not yet, but -” he stops talking for a brief moment, and you barely make out the words on the other line. 

“Ethan, I don’t think we’re going to be able to decrypt the files, there’s a safety feature attached to everything that will instantly delete it all if someone tries and is unsuccessful. I’ve done all we can, but, wow, I’ve never seen anything like this before.” 

“I think I might have figured out a way, actually,” Hunt looks back to you, and you pretend to not be paying attention, looking around the room at the bed, the furniture, the walls -

“Oh. Okay. Wait a minute, is it the girl you kidnapped?” 

You turn around in surprise, giving away that you could hear the conversation the whole time.

“Kidnapped?” You mouth to Hunt. Maybe in a way, you were his hostage, but also you weren’t leaving Prague without the chip. You were following him… in a way. Not the other way around. 

He rolls his eyes. “I’ll let you know soon. Just, hang tight.” 

A short beep cuts off the call and Hunt slips the phone back in his pocket. 

“You’ve got an assignment to do.” 

A clock on the nightstand glows the time. 04:15 AM.

“Can this wait till tomorrow?” You whine. You weren’t that tired, just wrung out from all this… emotional tension, and having your night totally ruined by some IMF agent in a shiny suit. 

Hunt shakes his head. “No. Now. At least get us in. Prove that you can decrypt it, and then we do the rest in the morning.” 

It’s no use fighting with him. You’ve already lost the chip to him. Might as well win back some points by getting into the drive and figuring out the coordinates, for yourself at least. 

He looks over your shoulder and nods his head towards the computer in the sitting area behind you. You shuffle your feet over to it and plop down on the couch. Agent Hunt puts his pistol on the small table by the door and takes off his tie, following you. 

You reach for the computer. 

“Ah -” Hunt lunges forward and grabs it before you can. 

You fold your arms and sit back on the couch, pouting. “Can you just maybe not treat me like a threat for like five seconds?” 

“Are you not?” He says haughtily, but slides the computer over to you once it’s unlocked. 

He reaches into his pocket and pulls out what looks like a black thumb drive, the vessel for the chip that has the information that we both so desperately want. The second he plugs it into the computer, a black terminal window pops up on the screen and a little white line in the top left corner blinks. 

He moves behind the couch to watch. And maybe to stop you from going anywhere. It was easier if he was already on his feet. 

You ignore his intimidating presence behind you and type a few lines of code. 

cd /mnt/drive

ls -a

A list of oddly named files flashes across the screen, numbers and letters combined in gibberish to the untrained eye, but not to you. 

The encryption interface loads after a few taps. It’s sleek, custom, multi-layered and definitely not something the IMF has seen before.

You lean in closer to the computer, fingers clicking rapidly across the keyboard. 

./decode --override-lock --key="Vale.008"

The screen stalls for a moment. Then - 

ACCESS GRANTED. 

WELCOME, AGENT Y/L/N. 

Hunt says your last name under his breath. 

You almost swear under your breath, dying a little inside from embarrassment. You were trying to stay under his radar, but it was inevitable that he would eventually figure out your name.  

A file tree displays underneath the welcome message. One of the files says 

/relay_nodes

With two keyboard clicks, you open it, and five coordinates display on the screen. 

39.0438° N, 77.4874° W

50.1109° N, 8.6821° E

1.3521° N, 103.8198° E

43.2965° N, 5.3698° E

64.1466° N, 21.9426° W

You hear a sharp inhale behind you. Hunt’s crossed arms drop. 

“Well?” he asks. 

Glancing back at him, you smirk. “Glad you didn’t shoot me?”

Although he’s serious, you can see that he’s impressed. Maybe more relieved that you’re in the mix and could break into the files so easily. 

“Since I wrote the code, I wrote a backdoor. They had no idea, of course.”

“And you wrote a welcome message to yourself?”

Wait. Yeah, that’s odd. 

“Not sure what that’s about. I don’t remember putting that into the program, but since a lot of the code is artificial intelligence, it might have just happened randomly,” you lie. 

There’s a pit in your stomach. Part of you fears that they now know you got into the drive. 

Before Hunt can ask any more questions, you yawn. Not overly dramatic, but enough to sell your next line. “So are you gonna tie me to the chair until the morning?” 

He circles around the couch and heads to a cabinet on the other side of the room. “No. But you’re not going anywhere. Get some rest and we’ll continue in the morning.” 

He grabs a t-shirt and sweats out of one of the drawers and tosses it to you. You catch it, noticing the smell of clean laundry and cologne on it. They’re his. 

“Make do. You can use the bathroom now if you want.” 

You take out the drive, placing it on the table and shut the laptop, slightly paranoid now that someone could track your location on it. You can feel Hunt’s eyes on you as you make your way to the bathroom, and now you’re painfully aware of how sweaty, tired, and uncomfortable you’ve been in the dress all night. 

He turns away now and you shut the door. Your shower only lasts a few minutes, thankfully there were some basic toiletries on top of the toilet, and you quickly change into Hunt’s borrowed clothes. 

Wow. IMF agents are spoiled. 

As you walk out, you see Hunt back over by the computer, typing something away. He's discarded his navy suit jacket and rolled up the sleeves to his white shirt, revealing his muscular forearms.

He glances up at you, does a double take, but says nothing. Something about you, undone, hair wet, and in his clothes makes him feel something unfamiliar in his chest. Dangerous. 

You walk over to him and fold your arms. 

“I can take the couch,” you say before he can argue with you. “I don’t need IMF thinking I tried to seduce you in your sleep.” 

He doesn’t look up from the laptop. “You’d fail,” he says. But his tone is lighter. “Take the bed. I got some more things to take care of here.” 

You sigh and walk over to the bed, not even bothering to get under the covers. You could sleep on a cobblestone road right now. 

"I’m shocked you’re not handcuffing me to the bed. You’re getting soft, Agent Hunt," you say loud enough for him to hear your final words for the night.  

He doesn’t laugh. But his mouth twitches like he wants to. 

》 chapter 3

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~ % TAGLIST: @sarahskywalker-amidala @mirrorballbb

[misssparklingpaws]

Shadow in the Flame

Chapter 6: The Void Doesn’t Get Her

The sound of a body hitting the mat hard echoed through the training room.

“Again,” Aria ordered arms folded, completely unfazed by Robert’s groan from the floor.

He blinked up at the ceiling. “I’m seeing stars.”

“Great. Now aim for them,” Aria deadpanned. “Back on your feet, Reynolds. This isn’t ballet.”

Red Guardian chuckled. “I took ballet once. Strong thighs.”

Aria didn’t even blink. “Then use them to stop faceplanting like a tranquilized hippo.”

Walker winced. “Damn, she’s in full Stark mode today.”

“Stark mode?” Aria raised an eyebrow. “You haven’t seen Stark mode. That was me being nurturing.”

She turned her icy gaze to Yelena, who was lazily stretching against the wall. “Belova, if you’re done posing like a bored cat, maybe contribute something that doesn’t involve sass and eyeliner.”

Yelena smirked. “That’s 90% of my personality.”

“And 100% of the reason you’re getting flanked in every sim,” Aria shot back. “Move.”

Bucky leaned against the railing above, sipping his coffee like he was watching a reality show. “You know, she was like this as a teenager too. Used to critique Jarvis’s syntax.”

“Jarvis appreciated the feedback,” Aria muttered, resetting the training sim.

Robert slowly stood, wiping sweat from his brow. “I’m trying to go easy. I don’t want to accidentally vaporize anyone.”

“Sweet,” Aria said flatly. “But if I wanted sweet, I’d order a cupcake. You’re a nuke, Reynolds. Use it or at least stop getting your ass kicked by training bots with the IQ of a toaster.”

He gave her a dry look. “Toasters don’t punch.”

“Neither do you, apparently,” she quipped, turning back to the console. “Walker, your stance still says ‘college linebacker’ and not ‘covert ops.’ Try bending your knees before someone snaps them backwards.”

Walker groaned. “You know, most leaders offer constructive feedback.”

Aria raised a well manicurate finger. “You’re still alive. That is my constructive feedback.”

Yelena snorted.

“Look,” Aria said, pacing in front of them like a sarcastic general, “this next mission is supposed to be simple. Which means we’ll probably be on fire by minute three. If any of you panic or hesitate, I swear I will haunt you after I die. And not in a helpful, Obi-Wan kind of way. I mean full La llorona-level regret.”

Robert blinked. “You plan to die?”

“No,” she said dryly, “but statistically one of you will do something stupid enough to make me want to.”

She eyed each of them. “This isn’t about being perfect. It’s about being sharp. Focused. Synchronized. You don’t have to like each other. You don’t even have to like me.”

A beat.

“Though I get it. I’m an acquired taste, a really expensive one""

Yelena muttered, “Like jet fuel and espresso.”

Aria smirked faintly. “Exactly.”

She stepped back and hit the panel again. Drones emerged, red lights blinking.

“Next round. Show me you’ve got more than banter and fragile egos.”

Robert inhaled and nodded.

Walker stretched his neck.

Yelena grinned. “Let’s dance, bots.”

Bucky sipped his coffee. “She’s terrifying.”

“Good,” Aria muttered.

---

The mission was supposed to be simple.

Controlled perimeter. Low-threat arms dealers. Bucky on point. Ghost in stealth. Aria coordinating strategy. Robert in support.

Everything went sideways in under three minutes.

Explosives. Hidden artillery. Panic.

“Evacuate, evacuate!” Aria yelled.

And then.

Aria cried out, short, sharp, wrong. She went down hard behind cover.

Across the field, Robert turned and time slowed.

He saw the blood blooming across her suit.

His body locked. Breath gone.

The Void stirred.

Something snapped.

The world blurred.

Noise fell away.

And the Void, that monstrous, ever-present storm behind his eyes howled for release.

Let her go, it whispered. She’s not yours to save.

“No” Robert muttered aloud.

She’s always been cold to you. Distant. She doesn’t care.

His eyes flickered black at the edges. His hands began to tremble.

“Robert!” her voice cut through the chaos. “Do not let that thing speak for you!”

He gasped, blinking.

“I know what’s in your head,” she growled, propped against the wall. “I’ve built tech like that voice. You’re not the monster. You’re the control.”

The Void snarled.

She’s lying. She pities you. She wouldn’t bleed like that for you.

He hovered on the edge.

His hands trembled.

Then her voice came again ragged, but fierce.

“Robert You can control it.”

He froze, panting. Black tendrils of the Void curled just beneath his skin.

“You’re not scared of breaking things anymore, remember?” she rasped, still conscious.

Robert stood firm. He looked at her bleeding, breath ragged, still fighting to stay awake and something inside him shifted.

He chose her voice.

Then something new took over.

Not fear. Not fury.

Focus.

He surged forward—precise, fast, calm. Like she trained him.

“Holy hell,” Bucky muttered. “He’s locked in.”

Robert knelt beside Aria, gently lifting her.

“You’re okay,” he said, voice shaking. “I got you.”

She grunted. “If you drop me, I swear I’ll rise from the dead to kill you.”

He laughed half delirious, half in awe and cradled her in his arms.

She clutched his collar, more from weakness than anything else. “Slow down, hero. I’m leaking.”

“I got you,” he whispered.

“You better,” she muttered. “I’m expensive.”

---

The Quinjet was already landing when he burst through the dust and chaos.

Bucky blinked. “Robert?”

He didn’t stop, just carried her up the ramp, fire in his eyes.

Yelena gaped. “Is this a battlefield rescue or a Nicholas Sparks adaptation?”

Red Guardian nudged her. “Sentry’s found his muse.”

Aria winced from where she lay in Robert’s arms. “Muse? I’m not bleeding for poetry, Alexei.”

Yelena whistled. “Even half-dead, she’s sarcastic. Tony’s daughter.”

Robert gently laid her down on the medical bench, refusing to let go of her hand.

The Void was quiet now. Watching. Waiting.

He ignored it.

“You’re going to be okay,” he said softly.

Aria gave him a look half stern, half soft. “Don’t make this a thing, Reynolds.”

“It’s already a thing,” he whispered.

She closed her eyes. “You’re sweet. That’ll get you killed.”

“Maybe,” he said. “But I’ll die carrying you out of the fire. Every time.”

He brushed a strand of hair off her face. “Hey, stay awake. We’re almost at the tower.”

Her lips twitched just a hint of something close to a smile.

Then, with perfect deadpan timing, she added, “You’re still terrible at hand-to-hand.”

Yelena burst into laughter from the cockpit. “She lives! And she’s fine. Classic Stark.”

Walker piped up, “We should probably schedule them a sparring session. With pillows.”

Robert caressed Aria’s head, quieter this time. “You scared the hell out of me.”

“Good. Now maybe you’ll stop hesitating,” she said, opening her eyes, Robert watching her like she hung stars above her head.

Red Guardian beamed. “That was like watching a Hallmark movie... but with violence.”

Robert sat down beside Aria, one arm still around her, as the medical systems kicked in.

Yelena leaned back in her seat, muttering with a grin, “This is getting better than Netflix.”

---

The elevator doors slid open with a ding, revealing Aria half-leaning, half-stumbling forward determined to walk on her own, despite the dried blood on her suit and the way her shoulder was clearly not working right.

Robert was right beside her, hands hovering like he wanted to help but knew better than to touch unless she asked.

“Aria” he started gently.

“I’m fine.”

“You’re limping.”

“I’m limping with style.”

“You got shot.”

“It’s a Thursday. Stark family tradition.”

She took another step, stumbled, and hissed through her teeth. Robert instantly reached for her again.

She batted him away with her good arm. “I said I’m fine.”

“You’re bleeding through the bandages.”

“I’ve bled through worse.”

Robert narrowed his eyes. “At least let me help you to your room.”

“No,” she said firmly. “Because the second I let you, Bucky’s gonna say I’ve gone soft and Yelena will tell everyone I’ve imprinted on you like a baby duck.”

“I already carry you around like a rom-com lead,” he muttered. “Might as well commit.”

That got a half-smirk from her. “Careful, Romeo. That kind of dedication gets people written into tragic poetry.”

He grinned, gently slipping his arm under hers despite the protest. “I’m okay with tragedy. As long as you’re still breathing at the end.”

“Charming,” she muttered, letting him support her just enough to take the weight off her right leg.

They shuffled toward her quarters in silence for a beat.

She limped toward the couch, trying to shrug off his assistance, but when her knees buckled slightly, Robert was already there hands steady, gentle, catching her before she hit the floor.

“Don’t say it,” she warned, pointing a gloved finger in his face as she settled with a wince onto the cushions.

“I didn’t say anything.”

“You thought it.”

He knelt down in front of her, glancing at her boots. “You want help getting these off?”

Aria narrowed her eyes. “Is that your polite way of asking if you can undress me?”

Robert raised both brows, biting back a grin. “I mean… only if you ask very nicely.”

She smirked despite herself. “That’s how people end up catching feelings and lawsuits.”

He gently began unlacing one boot anyway, his touch careful around the dried blood and scuffed armor.

“You don’t have to do this,” she said, quieter now. “I’ve taken worse hits.”

“Yeah,” he replied, “and I bet you brushed those off with the same charming personality.”

She snorted. “Once I made a SHIELD medic cry just by thanking him. It’s a gift.”

He tugged off her first boot, setting it down beside him, then moved to the second. “You’re not as scary as you pretend to be.”

“Keep talking like that and I will throw something at you.”

“Sure,” he said. “As soon as you can lift your arm without swearing.”

She went silent for a second. He looked up, saw the fatigue creeping into her face. The pain. The weight she always carried like a second skin.

“You really okay?” he asked again, softer this time.

“I’ll be fine,” she replied. “After I shower, sleep, and threaten Yelena into silence.”

He took her second boot off, then looked around. “You want help getting the rest of the suit off? Just asking as your medically concerned teammate. Not, you know… a creep.”

She gave him a deadpan look. “Robert. If you start unzipping anything, I will file a strongly worded memo to HR.”

He chuckled “You’re not great at letting people take care of you.”

“Nope.”

“And yet… here we are.”

She watched him quietly for a beat, expression unreadable.

“You care too much,” she said finally. “That’s dangerous.”

“I’ve been dangerous longer than I’ve been kind.”

That caught her attention. Her mouth twitched like she wanted to say something clever, but it came out quieter than expected.

“I don’t always know what to do with people like you.”

Robert looked up, boots off, hands resting on his knees. “People like me?”

“People who don’t give up on broken things.”

He stood slowly, careful not to crowd her. “You’re not broken, Aria.”

She raised an eyebrow. “Oh, Cielo. I was raised by Tony Stark. I come factory defective.”

He smiled, soft and sincere. “Still worth the repair.”

She looked at him for a long moment, then waved weakly toward the door. “Go before I start feeling feelings and call for backup.”

Robert moved toward the door but hesitated. “I’ll be right outside.”

“Of course you will.”

He paused at the door, hand on the frame.

“I meant what I said earlier,” he told her. “I'd carry you out of the fire again. Every time.”

She met his gaze, just for a second.

“Just don’t try to carry me into the shower. Or we’re both going out the window.”

The door slid shut between them.

And Robert—still smiling—took a seat right outside.

Just in case.

[aspen78]

Chapter 6: How it all Byrnes

<<prev chp>>

--

Government buildings rarely whispered, but this one? The Pentagon? This floor of the Pentagon? 

It stopped whispering long ago. It held its breath.

Sound didn’t just fade here--it was put on mute.  

This was the kind of silence you didn’t break with a cough. The kind you didn’t fill with footsteps unless you knew where you were going. 

Everything was all steel walls and buried secrets. No windows. No clocks. Time moved differently here--like it could be redacted just like anything else.

Air down here buzzed with something more than fluorescent lighting--something buried beneath miles of earth and silence. Most people didn’t know this wing existed. Most who did pretended it didn’t.

And, for what goes on down here. It was probably for the best.

(Y/n)--Vireo, whatever you want to call her, all of her--had a bad habit of showing up in these sort of places. Places she technically wasn't cleared for.

Another set of mechanized doors swished open for the girl as she dropped the “borrowed” key card and the silicone swatch of an authorized fingerprint back into the pocket of her blazer. Even through leathered loafers, her steps plodded through the maze of halls inaudibly.

She moved through the system like a courier. Quick. Unimportant. Boring. Belonging.

Security cameras tracked her, but what were they going to do with footage of a person who so very much looked like another agent? 

Black blazer? Check.

Pressed button up? You know it.

Glasses? Exactly the kind you’d never notice.

Badge? Got it… stolen, but still got it.

Finger ready to be scanned? The wonders of 3D printing are truly amazing.

People didn’t question confidence in this place. They questioned mistakes. Glitches. Broken lines of protocol. They looked for the hacker in the hoodie, the grunt with the sweaty hands. No one looked twice at an unmemorable face.

(Y/n) passed another checkpoint like it was just a suggestion. She didn’t smirk. But she wanted to.

Cecil was going to be pissed.

But she was already pissed.

Her taking their defense system for a joyride was the start of making things even. 

A few turns later, and she was standing in front of a vault-grade door marked with no nameplate.

It slid open before she could even attempt to rewire it.

“Come in, Byrnes.”

She sighed. “You’re no fun anymore.”

Cecil’s office was less of a room and more of a cold war command center dressed like a broom closet. Low lights. One-way mirrors. A single screen flickering static-blue across his desk. And the man himself, standing behind it like he hadn’t moved in hours.

(Y/n) stepped in, slow, deliberate. She didn’t take off the glasses. Didn’t drop the mask--not the real one. 

He gestured to the chair across from him. “Have a seat.”

She remained standing.

Cecil didn’t push it. He didn’t need to. 

“You’re not subtle,” he said, adjusting a file on his desk that wasn’t really a file. Just a thin stack of hollow pages, light-reactive and probably encrypted six different ways.

“I was,” she said flatly. “You’re just not normal.”

“You broke in through seven layers of biometric security and knocked one of my guys out.”

(Y/n) folded her arms. “You say that like it’s impressive.”

“It is,” Cecil admitted. “Still doesn’t mean I like it.”

She shrugged before reaching into her pocket. “You’re still alive after your late-night talk.”

Her eyes narrowed to hone in on the faint bruising around his neck. “I take it that it went well.”

He just rubbed his jaw with a sigh like he hadn’t slept. “Define well.”

“You’re breathing.”

“Barely.” He glanced up from the terminal embedded in his desk. “Nolan doesn’t like being questioned. And he's on edge right now.”

Her fingers grazed a small flash drive, letting her thumb run across the smooth surface of it. Thinking. Debating.

To her credit, this was quite a decision to make. It was essentially synonymous to hovering over the button that would nuke the world.

She rolled the flash drive between her fingers once, then twice more, like it might decide for her.

Then she set it down on the edge of his desk. Soft. Final.

It made no sound. But the weight was there.

He looked at it, eyes glaring. He didn’t reach for it yet.

“And what’s on this that I haven’t already seen?”

“Proof,” she murmured, cautious of how loud she spoke this into existence.

Cecil slowly picked up the drive, turning it between his fingers. “Of what?”

(Y/n) met his gaze, somewhat amused, but mostly annoyed. “How long are we going to play 20 questions, Stedman?”

Cecil didn’t answer right away.

He stared at her, like he was searching for the catch hidden in the words she hadn’t said yet. Then he looked at the drive again, almost like it might burn a hole through his hand.

Finally, he sighed and slotted it into the reader embedded in his desk.

The lights dimmed slightly as the screen lit up--not a clean data stream, but a patchwork of spliced footage, metadata, satellite timestamps, and audio pulled from black box files that were never supposed to exist.

And there he was.

Nolan Grayson. Omni-Man.

Not just standing. Not just moving.

Killing.

The Guardians.

No interference. No defense. No unknown third party.

There was only him. And them. And red.

The footage wasn’t long. It didn’t need to be. You didn’t need ten minutes of betrayal to know it happened. You only needed one frame.

As the room came back to a still quiet, both of them sighed.

“Why bring it to me now?”

She shrugged, but it wasn’t casual. “Because I’ve been called a lot of things, but not suicidal.”

Cecil allowed himself a bitter smirk. “Yet you broke into my base to hand me the trigger we’d have to use on the most powerful man on Earth.”

His eyes lingered on the screen for a long time, even after it darkened again. His fingertips tapped the desk--once, twice--then went still.

“I already had Darkblood sniffing around,” he said after a long beat. “He’s been circling the edges of this. Hasn’t found this yet, though. But he’s still… pushing too close.”

(Y/n) watched his face scrunch up in annoyed frustration. “You don’t like him?”

“I don’t trust him,” Cecil corrected. “But that doesn’t mean he’s wrong.”

“He isn’t,” she confirmed, her eyebrow raised. “It’s plugged into your computer now. It’s not a theory anymore, Stedman. It’s not ‘he’s off.’ It’s not ‘he’s hiding something.’ It’s him. In that room. I can ID the timestamp, the body language. I watched him crack Red Rush’s skull on repeat just to be sure I wasn’t projecting.”

It was a long second of just eye contact. Scrutinizing. Uncomfortable. Eye contact.

“You realize what happens if we move too soon, right? No backup plan. No replacement. No safety net. If we spook him-”

“We all die.” She said it like she was stating a grocery item. “I know.”

“And if we wait too long-”

“We still all die.”

Cecil nodded grimly. “Glad we’re on the same page.”

“I don’t think glad is the right word,” (Y/n) scoffed at that. “And I didn’t bring this to you for you to give me orders on what to do and what not to do.” 

“What are you doing in preparation for this.”

Her mouth pressed thin when he didn’t have a response. “You’re waiting for the perfect checkmate while Omni-Man is already moving pawns,” she said, voice dropping lower. “You think he’ll slip. That you’ll come up with a plan so airtight, you can tip the king with a smile on your face.”

“In an ideal world, that would be the plan. But I think we both know ideal is so far from reality now.” She leaned closer across the desk--not threatening, but unwavering. “Stop waiting for ideal. Or you’re gonna be the director who let the world burn while he waited for it.”

“I know,” he finally said, quiet. Not reluctant. Just weighed. “I know.”

He sat back in his chair like it aged him. The static-blue monitor dimmed. The flash drive still blinked at the base of the desk like a tiny red eye.

She could see it behind his tired eyes. The rotations of a dozen emergency scenarios. The unspoken calculations about damage, fallout, and what--if anything--could stop Omni-Man.

(Y/n) watched him. Not like an ally. Not like an enemy. Like someone who refused to be either.

“Whatever you’re thinking? It won’t be enough,” she sighed. Deeply. “There isn’t going to be one perfect play. We’re going to need play after play. Hit after hit.”

“We can’t be stupid enough to delusionize a win. We’re here to buy time.” Running a tense hand through her hair, she tugged on the very ends of it like they could anchor her, stressed. Distraught. Scared. “For him.”

Cecil watched her for a moment, then looked past her. Maybe at the wall. Maybe through it. Then, he closed his eyes. “You saw the file.”

“I saw the file.”

He tried justifying himself, “Mark is the only one who stands a chance-” 

“I know, Stedman,” (y/n) cut in.

Her voice didn’t spike. It dropped. Soft. Dangerous. Like she was tired of repeating herself but still doing it anyway--because no one else would.

“I know what he is. I know what he could become. I know what he might have to become.” 

For the first time since she stepped down here, she let go of her facade. 

The edge in her voice dulled, not from weakness but from wear. The glint in her eyes faded, no longer pretending she was only a third party. The rigidity of her posture loosened under the weight of sentiment. A quiet kind of resignation.

“That doesn’t mean I have to like it.”

The moment didn’t last. It never did.

(Y/n) ran a hand down her face, reeling in whatever was left unsaid, before her spine reset into something colder--straighter. She gave one last glance to the blinking drive.

“You’re the director,” she muttered, already prepping to leave. “Direct.”

His mouth twitched, barely. An unrestrained movement breaking through. “Watch it.”

Her brow arched, just slightly. “Or what? You’ll assign me more teenagers to babysit?”

Cecil gave her a dry, unenthused look. “You’re exhausting.”

“So are you. What’s new?” She rolled her eyes with a small smirk. 

She finally took a step back, her stance loosening by degrees. “I’m thinking with you. But y’know, you get paid for this.”

His eyes bored into her, and he deadpanned--yet again, “Exhausting.”

Her smirk grew enough. And, the door behind her hissed open again for her to turn to leave.

“But Byrnes?” his voice hooked in the air, catching her right before she stepped out of the frame.

She paused. 

“If something happens to you before we act--”

“Don’t pretend you’ll avenge me,” she cut in, calm but cold. “You’re not that sentimental.”

Cecil didn’t deny it. Just tapped the desk once more. “Fine. Then try not to die. I’m short on people who actually get it.”

(Y/n) gave no reply. Only a faint lilt of a chuckle as she disappeared into the corridor.

Still the same steel-and-silence tomb they’d always been, but she now felt heavier walking through them this time. Like the walls had swallowed her voice whole. Like the decision she’d just made had soaked into the soles of her shoes.

She passed another security junction, nodded at a guard who didn’t look twice, and slipped into a nondescript elevator bound for the upper floors.

She adjusted the blazer again. Straightened her cuffs. She didn’t need to, but it helped. Rituals did. Something to focus on besides the knowledge she’d just handed the end of the world to a man with a scar and a death wish. 

The Pentagon aboveground was louder--barely--but even this high up, the silence dragged behind her like a shadow.

The elevator doors dinged open.

She stepped out into a sterile hallway--bright, bland, somewhere between reception and regulation. Not her style. Too clean. Too conscious of itself.

And then she turned a corner--and collided with someone.

Hard enough that the wind almost knocked out of her. Not from the impact. From the recognition.

“Whoa--sorry, I didn’t see-” A voice halted mid-apology.

His hands had automatically caught her shoulders. Gentle. Familiar.

His fingers froze.

Her eyes snapped up. Met his.

Brown. Wide. Familiar.

Mark Grayson.

Oh, great. 

Impeccable timing as always. Just what she needed after pawning off a flash drive labeled "End of World, Probably."

She didn’t say anything. Neither did he.

Not at first.

Because she knew he was already squinting.

And not in the normal awkward-teenage-boy way. The I-know-you’ve-kicked-someone’s-ass-in-front-of-me-before kind of squint.

The blazer. The glasses. The hair. She still looked like someone he should walk past in a hallway. But her eyes?

He’d seen them behind a visor. Under smoke. Just before the sword moved. 

And he watched them move over him. The way she looked at him made him nervous, self-conscious even. Made him automatically look down at his suit for any oddly placed tears. Made him fix his windassaulted hair. Made him grip his mask even tighter. Made him sweat.

He may not be squinting in the normal awkward-teenage-boy way, but he sure was fidgeting in the normal awkward-teenage-boy way. 

Meanwhile, she was facing the quiet internal siren in her head screaming at her to switch from contain nuclear secrets mode to oh no, social interaction mode.

“Uh…” Mark blinked. “Hi?”

(Y/n) adjusted her glasses--not because they’d slipped, but because she needed a second. Maybe two. Maybe a decade.

“…Hello,” she said, cool and even. Polite. The way school acquaintances say it when you spot them in public.

He squinted again.“Wait a second...”

“Nope,” she said immediately, backing out of his hold. “Wrong person. Very flattering though.”

He frowned. “I didn’t say anything yet.”

“You were about to.”

“Was I?”

“You always are.”

 “Okay, that sounds like something someone who knows me would say,” he spluttered with a half-hazardly thrown finger gun, confident he was fully caught up with the scene now. 

(Y/n) groaned under her breath and pinched the bridge of her nose. And her stomach did a slow, sarcastic spin. Of course. Of course.

This was not on the agenda. Not after footage. Not after war prep. Not after giving Cecil the flash drive of doom and telling him to think faster.

And now she was arguing with a half-sweaty teenage hero in the middle of a hallway that probably had thirty surveillance cameras.

Whiplash.

Absolute whiplash.

“Your eyes give you away,” Mark said, like that settled it. And settled himself against the wall, arms crossed and teeth smiling.

“That’s creepy,” she deadpanned, her face pinched to show her distaste--amused distaste, but still distaste. 

“Is it?” he asked, smile widening like he thought he was winning something. “Because I think it’s poetic. Like--Shakespeare-level poetic. Or at least early Poe.”

She let a long sigh through her nose. “Grayson.”

He grinned. “Wow, last name. I must really be getting to you.”

(Y/n) scrunched those eyes he was so very familiar with, apparently.

“C’mon,” he said, taking a small step closer, tilting his head like he was trying to line up her current form with the battle-ready image in his memory. “You think a pair of glasses and a blazer are gonna throw me off?”

“They usually do,” she muttered. “That’s half the point.”

“Well, they don’t. I’d recognize those eyes anywhere.”

“Stop saying that.”

“Why?”

“Because you’re saying it like you’re in a cheesy romcom.”

He chuckled. Real. Stupid. Warm. His smile was crooked now. Warm. And it hit her in a way it absolutely shouldn’t have. Not right now. Not when she still felt the blood pumping cold from her last conversation.

(Y/n) stood there a beat longer than she meant to. Her shoulders were still squared like they hadn’t realized the war room was gone. Her mind was still back on the screen. The footage. The future.

But Mark? Mark was just there. Waiting. No knives. No suspicion. Just the same awkward warmth that had somehow become familiar.

She opened her mouth. The beginnings of a sentence tried to leave her, but then stopped. It swerved into a breath, and she pressed her lips together. Then, she tried again. 

“I’m going now.”

She took a step back. He took one forward.

(Y/n) narrowed her eyes. 

He saw it, because of course he did. 

“I’m not- I’m not following you,” Mark spluttered, unconvincingly, still with a smile. “I’m just… walking the same direction at the same time. Like a coincidence. Or fate.”

She quickened her pace slightly, but he matched her again, too persistent for someone who was just “walking the same government hallway.”

(Y/n) huffed, blowing a strand of hair out of her face as her shoes mutely hit the sterile tile. “You’re unbearable.”

Mark didn’t miss a beat. “You say that like it’s a new development.”

“It’s not.”

“Well, then, at least I’m consistent.” He grinned at her like that was a badge of honor.

She finally cracked--air that almost became a laugh escaped her nose. And she hated how easy it was. How damn fast he melted the steel she hadn’t even unclenched since the sublevels. The shift in her tone, her spine, her pulse--it was too fast. Too much. Whiplash.

She immediately covered it with a cough. And, Mark pretended not to notice, but his teeth shone even brighter than the white lights.

“You are the only person who talks to me like this,” she tried to scoff.

Mark grinned like that was the entire point.

“Yeah, well--maybe I’m just the only one who knows how,” he said, easy, shrugging one shoulder.

(Y/n) rolled her eyes so hard it was practically audible, but she didn’t stop walking. Didn't tell him to leave. Didn't tell him not to follow, either.

They walked in silence for a few steps. Or rather, they moved in parallel--(Y/n) all control and solitary, Mark more of a friendly orbit, like a moon too interested in a planet that very clearly did not want to be the center of anything right now.

It should’ve been irritating.

It was irritating.

But it also wasn’t.

Because he wasn’t asking. He wasn’t pressing. He wasn’t even demanding she confirm who she was, despite the fact he clearly knew. He just walked with her, making the atmosphere lighter whether she wanted it or not.

…She hated him a little for that.

Not real hate. Not the kind that sticks. The kind that flares when someone makes it too easy to breathe after you’ve nearly drowned.

“Do you always do this?” she asked after a moment, gaze forward, voice low.

He tilted his head. “Do what?”

“This,” she motioned vaguely with a hand. “Miraculously time it so you catch me at my worst moments and use that to try to be my friend.”

Mark smiled. Not like before. Just simple. Like the kind of smile you pull on when you don’t know how to respond. 

“...Aren’t we friends?”

She stopped walking.

Not with some dramatic skid or gasp or swing of the arms--but like a machine whose program had hit a wall. Like the word itself broke a cog inside her head. Friends.

Her jaw didn’t drop. Her breath didn’t catch.

She just paused.

Long enough that Mark realized he’d said something heavier than it sounded.

He blinked. “I mean--I thought we were. Or at least heading that way? I mean, I hoped-” He was doing that thing again. Rambling. Filling the air. Hands trying to catch his own words as they tripped over each other. “It’s not like I have a quota or anything, I just--well, you’re you, and I like being around-”

“Mark.”

She said it like a pressure valve.

He shut up.

The hallway, the lights, the sterile silence--all of it blurred for a second.

She wasn’t looking at him.

Her posture was still straight, still calculated. But something in her face--something in the space just beneath the skin--looked tired.

Not from walking. Not from running.

From carrying.

“…Aren’t we friends?” he asked again, a little more carefully this time. A little less certain.

(Y/n) didn’t answer right away.

She stared down the hallway instead. Like she might find the right words hidden between fluorescent hums and security cameras.

Then she said, “You don’t know me.”

“I’m trying to,” he said, quiet.

That got a glimpse of something behind her eyes. Not warmth. Not cold. Something unfinished.

She looked at him fully now, and it hit harder than it should have--how much was behind that expression. Grief. Steel. Hesitation. All fighting for the same square inch of space.

“You’re not supposed to,” she said.

He tilted his head. “Why not?”

She gave a breath of something like a laugh, but it didn’t reach very far. “Because if you do, it gets harder.”

“For who?”

“For me.”

That landed with more weight than either of them expected.

Mark’s mouth opened--some clumsy kindness ready to leap out--but her look stopped it before it formed.

She stepped back once. Not far. Just enough to reset the space between them.

“You’re… good,” she said. Like it hurt to admit. “And I’m trying to keep you that way.”

Mark swallowed. “…You don’t have to protect me.”

“Yeah,” she murmured. “I do.”

She didn’t say it like a martyr.

She didn’t say it like someone brave.

She said it like it cost her something.

It hung there.

Simple. Unadorned. Heavy in a way that made the silence around it feel thinner, stretched like glass.

Maybe it was in the way she avoided looking at him. Or maybe it was in the way bits of guilt and sadness peeked out.

But he understood something now--something he hadn’t put words to until this second.

She wasn’t pushing him away because she didn’t care.

She was doing it because she did.

He shifted his weight, eyes flicking to her hands, her shoulders, her jaw--every part of her holding still like movement would make everything spill out.

“You always do that,” he sighed, shaking his head the way you do in every frustrating argument. 

It took a beat of hesitation for (Y/n) meet his prying stare. “Do what?”

“That thing where you decide everything for everyone. Like if you hold the weight long enough, the rest of us get to keep pretending this is… normal.”

She flinched. Barely, but enough. 

He saw it.

And, she had to look away for her next words. 

“Well, that's sort of the point.”

Mark’s brow creased. 

“If I hold it,” she mumbled, steadily. Almost eerily so. With that hollow undertone of someone reciting something implanted deep within them. “Then maybe you don’t have to. Maybe you still get make your stupid jokes. Still worry about that test you forgot about. Still flail at every attempt to impress the girl. Still wake up and want something.”

He couldn’t respond to that. Not right away.

Not because he didn’t have something to say--god, he had too much to say. Too many arguments, too many reasons she was wrong, or brave, or unfair to herself. 

But none of it would’ve mattered. None of it would’ve reached her the way he wanted it to.

Because she wasn’t asking for comfort.

She was explaining her logic.

And that’s what bothered him the most.

“…You think that’s what I want?” he asked finally, his voice lower now. “To be protected from the world like I’m still some kid who doesn’t get what’s coming?”

“No,” she stated, softly. “I think it’s what you deserve.”

That undid something in him.

Because there it was. Not pity. Not distance. Just… belief. In him, more than she let herself believe in anything else.

He stepped forward--not to grab her, not to reach, but to narrow the space again. Make it real.

“I don’t want to deserve normal if it means you don’t get to have it too,” he said.

Her voice came out barely above a whisper now, but it was still the loudest thing to him. “That’s not how this works.”

She looked at him then, and it almost ruined him.

Because it wasn’t cold. It wasn’t armored.

It was sad.

Not the kind of sadness that breaks down crying--but the kind that’s lived in someone’s bones so long, it’s just part of how they move now.

“You think I don’t want it?” she asked, a wry smile tugging at her mouth. “You think I don’t lie awake wishing for something as simple as a bad grade or an awkward party or a real conversation that doesn’t come with collateral damage?”

She didn’t wait for him to answer. He didn’t try to.

“I want normal more than anything,” she said, voice flat--not because she didn’t feel it, but because she felt it too much. “I don’t even get to pretend to have it as ‘me.’ I don’t go to school anymore. I head a company. I argue with men twice my age. I date to keep the tabloids distracted. I flirt when I’m supposed to, smile when it’ll make a better headline, and leave before anyone can ask a real question.” 

Finally, (y/n) met his eyes. Tired meeting pity. 

“And everyone keeps telling me I’m impressive. That I’m composed. That I’m handling it.” She paused, her jaw clenching. 

“I’m already fighting to keep two lives.” She looked away again. “I can’t handle adding a normal one.”

Mark didn’t back off. No, he stepped closer. Grazed his hand on her shoulder enough to get her attention again.

“Maybe…” he started, not sure and full of uncertainty, but earnest. “Maybe you don’t need another life.”

She didn’t move, but something in her eyes flickered. Caution. Skepticism. Bracing for some hollow reassurance.

“You can take--you’re allowed to take a moment for you. Just five minutes? Where none of that matters. Not the headlines, missions, or- or anything,” he smiled, asking for any form of consideration. “The world won’t fall apart that quickly, right?”

She stared at him like he’d just spoken in a language she hadn’t heard in years.

Five minutes?

Her throat tightened around the idea. Not because it was absurd.

But because it was dangerous.

Because it sounded a little too much like hope.

(Y/n) didn’t answer right away. Her eyes dropped--not out of guilt, not even hesitation, but calculation. Like she was weighing the cost of softness in a life that had no room for it.

He wasn’t asking for forever. Wasn’t asking her to tear down everything she'd built just to let him in.

He was asking for five minutes.

And she didn’t know how to say yes to something so simple.

Because if she said yes now, what would happen the next time someone needed her?

What if five minutes turned into ten? Turned into a habit?

Turned into her wanting more?

And want was dangerous.

Want was weakness.

Want was how people got kill-

Shit. How did it get this bad? 

Even when someone is asking for five minutes where you don’t spiral into your responsibilities, you still were.

(Y/n) shut her eyes, letting a new breath cycle through her lungs. She let herself breathe. Just once. Fully. 

Then it came out as a curt huff. Just like the ones when you can’t believe how stupid you were.

Her (e/c) met his patient brown ones and a small, pressed smile was willed into existence. Not a smartass smirk. Or that photo perfect grin. 

Just her smile.

“...Well,” she said, her tone somewhat neutral. “You got time for a coffee? Or should we keep standing here making eye contact until one of us combusts?” 

Mark’s grin was immediate. Stupid. Earnest. Real. 

Very Mark.

(Y/n)’s was tentative. Uncertain. But cracked open enough to be real.

Possibly (Y/n).

--

*bonus scene (b/c i felt like writing it but the chapter officially ended above :] )

The overhead lights in the break room buzzed with the faint flicker of neglect. One of them stuttered every now and then like it was trying to start a conversation. But it doesn’t. Because even the lights know better.  

Everything was beige or gray. Tables were bolted down. Chairs were stackable. Coffee machines looked like they have been through war.

Still, there was something oddly comforting about it. 

Maybe it was because no one spared the brightly colored hero or the ‘intern’ a second glance. In the eyes of everyone else, they simply just got another two bodies in the bureaucratic purgatory. 

The pair stood at the far end of the self-serve station. Mark stared at the array of options like it was a minefield. (Y/n) watched him with a vague sense of amusement, still trying to unclench the knot between her shoulder blades.

“So…,” he gestured with both hands, eyes squinting at the row of burnt carafes. “Do I risk the ‘hazelnut’ or the mystery third pot?”

She picked up a paper cup and lightly snorted, “I think you’ll regret either.”

He nodded solemnly, watching as she picked up the safe pot in the middle. “Cool, cool. Regret it is.”

Grasping the third pot, Mark watched the dark liquid slosh around the glass and swallowed. He filled the cup halfway and immediately winced at the scent that hit him. 

“Holy shit,” he groaned, shoving the cup away from his face. “That smells like battery acid and depression.”

(Y/n) hid a shit-eating grin behind her own cup, sipping at the bland, watered-down black coffee to cover a laugh. “That’s actually the Pentagon house blend.” 

He gave her a sidelong look, lips quirking. “I forgot you could joke.”

She gave him a look over the rim of her cup. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, I’m hilarious.”

Mark let out a soft snort.

“You’re just never in the crowd,” she finished, deadpan.

He chuckled as they walked their drinks over to a corner table tucked between a vending machine and a bulletin board littered with outdated training memos.

(Y/n) sat with her back to the corner. Old habit. Strategic. Eyes facing the room. One foot hooked around the leg of her chair like muscle memory never quite let her go.

Across from her, Mark plopped down ever so gracefully, staring at his cup like the coffee might melt through.

Still, he, of course, sipped it. Grimaced at it. And, immediately regretted it.

“I’m ninety percent sure this is paint thinner,” he muttered.

She finally let the smile fully break through. Not wide. Just... unguarded. “You’re the idiot who picked the mystery pot.”

He leaned on one elbow and pointed at her, mock-offended. “Excuse you, I was misled. You told me I’d regret both. That made this sound like a fun gamble.”

(Y/n) arched a disapproving brow at him, but the tilt of her lips gave her away. “So it’s my fault you chose to melt your tastebuds.”

Mark threw both hands up, still grinning. “Hey, I take responsibility for most of my terrible decisions. This one’s only, like… seventy percent mine.”

“Generous.”

“You’re welcome.”

She shook her head at his attempts of getting her to laugh, but she didn’t cover the tiny grin on her face.

Mark set the cursed cup down like it might explode if provoked further. He leaned back in the chair and glanced at her again, letting the grin settle into something softer. 

Seeing her in this light felt illegal for him. Not that she wasn’t allowed to be normal… adjacent. But with how she usually moved through the world, this felt new. And rare. And kind of good in its own weird, quiet way. 

She wasn’t armored up. Not fully. Not right now. No bird-mask. No shield. No mission reports or tactical evasions. Just her. Shoulders still a little tense. Foot still wrapped around the chair leg like she was expecting a breach. But her mouth? Still tilted in something that looked dangerously close to relaxed.

Mark tried not to stare. He did a bad job.

“So…” he started again, grasping at straws for a normalish topic. “No school?”

(Y/n) squinted at him as if asking “really,” but answered with a shrug anyway. “Not anymore.”

His eyes bore into her when she didn’t explain further, almost daring to pour his coffee in her watery one.

Snatching her cup from him, she gave a light glare. “I-um I graduated already.”

Mark blinked. “Wait. Really?”

(Y/n) took a swig from his coffee cup purely out of spite, grimaced, and set it back down like it personally offended her.

“Yeah,” she confirmed, voice recovering around the aftertaste. “Graduated.”

“High school?”

A quiet sip of bland chaser filled the air for a drawn out second. She gazed into the murky brown like it might offer a better way to say what came next. Because how do you admit to this without sounding pretentious? Or… like a government science experiment with a student ID.

“Um. Yeah, high school…” she started carefully. “And, uh. College.”

She could feel him trying to pry more out of her, but she didn’t look at him. Just sipped again.

“Wait.” Mark blinked like his brain was buffering. “College college?”

“Yeah.”

“You’re joking.”

She shook her head, the tiniest twitch of her mouth made a smirk. “I really wish I was.”

His mouth opened. Closed. Then opened again--this time with something that sounded like a confused half-laugh, like he wasn’t sure whether to be impressed or concerned.

“Hold on,” he said, holding out a hand like he could physically stop the revelation from snowballing. “You’re how old again?”

She leaned back slowly in her chair, arms crossing loosely, smirk already spreading. 

“Older than you,” she said, annoyingly smug.

He squinted harder at her. 

And, as if it actually managed to pull a real answer from her, she gave in. “...by a few months.”

“You’ve got that much mysterious aura and you’re barely older than me?”

“Some of us peak early,” (y/n) shrugged, smug still intact. “Besides, it’s not hard when you don’t sleep and already know half the curriculum because you’ve been hacking into government databases since middle school.”

Mark blinked again. “...What.”

She handed his cup back with a faint, innocent shrug. “What?” 

He waited for her to crack and admit it was all a bit. She didn’t. 

She smiled. “Is this really what you want to spend five minutes of normal wrapping your head around?”

He made a face. “Okay, fine, but if this is you being normal, I want a refund.”

Clicking her tongue, she put her cup down and corrected him like she was reading the fine print of a contract, “Five minutes of normal. Not five minutes of ordinary.”

"Right, my bad," He huffed a laugh, sinking into his chair like the weight of the day finally remembered it existed. His hand toyed with the edge of the coffee cup, rotating it slowly. “Y’know, for what it’s worth… I don’t think normal’s all that great.”

(Y/n) tilted her head--subtle, questioning.

“I mean, sure, it’s nice,” Mark continued, eyes still on the cup. “Simple. Safe. But--I don’t know. It’s hard to pretend I still fit into that.”

He glanced at her again, searching. Not pushing--just looking. Like he wasn’t sure if what he’d said made him sound ungrateful or just honest.

She didn’t give him an immediate answer. But she didn’t look away, either.

So he took that as permission to keep going.

Mark cleared his throat, “I keep trying to pretend I still care about pop quizzes and gross cafeteria food. But then there’s this whole other life I’m living that I’m not supposed to tell anyone about.”

He paused, swirling the coffee again like it might say something back this time.

“And, then I finally asked out this girl I like,” he said, almost as if he wasn’t sure whether to laugh or wince. “You saw how that went.”

The girl across from him just sat with him. Listening without interruption. Letting him have the air, because he needed it too.

“It was great for the most part. She was great. But I kept having to lie to her, or just leave stuff out,” he admitted, words slowing like they were dragging more weight than expected. “I mean, it was the first date… it’s the first try at getting to know someone you like, and I was already leaving out half my life.”  

He rubbed the back of his neck, fingers tangling slightly in his hair. “I want to be normal for her. I really do. But trying to just made me understand what you meant at the bench.”

(Y/n)’s gaze didn’t waver. If anything, it softened--but not in a way most people would notice. Just enough for someone who knew how hard she worked to keep things out of reach.

“You said it,” he added, voice a notch softer. “That’s not how this works when your life becomes fragments.”

She looked down at her hands. One still circled the rim of her cup like it was muscle memory. The other flexed slightly, resting against the edge of the table, fingers twitching like they were fighting the urge to hold something real.

“…Yeah,” she said after a long moment and then she let go of an admission. “I tried to give you a little buffer from that realization.”

His eyes flicked up only to see she wasn’t meeting his but her cup’s.

“Stedman said you were taking a night off so I picked up the alert for you,” she half shrugged as if it was nothing. “I didn’t think you should have to get electrocuted and broken up with in the same hour.” 

Mark let out a quiet breath, somewhere between gratitude and humor. “I was wondering how you showed up that fast. Don’t you live in New Jersey or something?”

“Stedman kidnapped me, so I was in the area,” she muttered with a grudge.   

He raised both eyebrows. “Like… literally kidnapped?”

She sipped her coffee again like it was a legally binding NDA. “The man has a teleporter at his disposal.”

“So… yeah. Literal kidnapping.”

“Technically, he asked first. I just didn’t realize ‘for what?’ was legally binding.”

He chuckled, a small, disbelieved one. 

“But, thanks…” he said quietly. “For taking the alert.”

(Y/n)’s eyes snapped to him for a half-second before she brushed the thanks off with a wave of her hand. “It wasn’t charity. You were busy. I wasn’t.”

“That’s the same tone Cecil uses when he wants me to think he’s not being nice.”

She scoffed, “Well, you both complain the same amount, so.”

“Still,” he said after a beat. “It helped.”

“Sure,” she offered an ounce of acknowledgement through a quirk of the lip. 

For a moment, neither of them said anything. Just let the scent of the--pathetic excuse for--coffee fill the air between them. No one else was in the room but them now. Two teens who didn’t feel like teens. Sitting across from each other--not like it was normal, but like normal didn’t matter. 

(Y/n) tapped her finger lightly against the rim of the cup again. A rhythm, faint and even. Mark watched the motion--not because it was loud, but because it was grounding. The kind of thing people did when they were still working out if they were allowed to be at peace.

“You think there’s anyone out there who doesn’t care about the ‘normal’ part?” he asked, faintly, almost like he didn’t want her to hear it.

A pause. Measured. Careful.

“Someone who gets it.”

That landed between them like a quiet echo. Not loud enough to demand anything--but not soft enough to ignore, either.

(Y/n) looked at him fully now, the weight of that last line filtering through her in real time. Something passed behind her eyes--quick, quiet, not quite visible. But it was there.

A flicker of recognition.

Of warning.

Of want.

She swallowed once. Then shifted an inch apart from him, gaze narrowing just slightly--not cold, but sharp. Assessing.

“Someone who gets it,” she echoed, carefully.

Not mocking. Not dismissive. Just… weighing it. Like she was trying to decide whether he even knew what he was asking.

Mark didn’t flinch under the scrutiny. He didn’t double down either. He just held the question where it was. In the air. Waiting.

“You’re looking for the wrong person then,” she said, voice quieter now. Less clipped. Less armored.

Mark tilted his head. “Yeah?”

She looked down again, like the words had to be mined from somewhere deeper than she was used to digging. Her next sentence came out like a confession whispered into a storm drain.

“You don’t want someone who gets it,” she said, voice lower. “You think you do.  But it’s a different kind of weight when someone understands exactly how much you’re carrying.”

“They don’t say, ‘I’m sorry you’re going through this.’ They say, ‘Yeah. Me too.’ And that’s worse, ” (Y/n)’s voice softened, somewhere between apology and resignation. “Because it’s not just shared. It’s mirrored. And sometimes, you don’t want a mirror. You want a window. A door. Something that opens out instead of in.”

Her eyes flicked back to his then--cautious, a little raw, but direct.

“That’s what normal people give you. Even if it’s fake, even if it’s fleeting. The chance to look at the world like you’re not trapped in it.”

She didn’t say "someone like me can’t give you that."

She didn’t have to.

It was written in the space between her posture and the tired set of her shoulders.

“I think you should give an actual shot with her.”

He could’ve said okay. He could’ve said maybe. He could’ve said nothing at all.

Instead, he leaned forward just slightly, elbows on the table, and said:

“But she doesn’t know this part of me.”

“It didn’t feel real.” His fingers tapped against the side of the cup again, mirroring her rhythm without realizing it. 

(Y/n) noticed. She always noticed. And for a moment, she said nothing.

Then--softly, without lifting her gaze-- “Maybe that’s why you tried.”

Mark tilted his head. “Because it wasn’t real?”

“No,” she said. “Because it could be.”

There was a pause.

Just long enough for the weight of it to settle between them. Not heavy--just exact. Measured. Like the moment had stopped pretending it was just casual.

Then his voice cut back in, low but sure.

“You think this--” he gestured between them, between the silence and the rawness and the edge of a conversation that wasn’t supposed to happen, “--feels fake?”

His tone wasn’t biting. It wasn’t dramatic. It was… quietly daring. Like he was offering her a way to deny it—if she needed it. But hoping she wouldn’t.

“No.” (Y/n) gave the smallest laugh. The kind that had too much honesty in it to be sarcastic. “But it’s messy.”

“It always is,” he agreed. “But that doesn’t mean it has to suck.”

“It kind of does, though,” she said. “If it didn’t suck, we wouldn’t be here drinking coffee that tastes like liquid regret pretending we’re allowed to have five minutes to feel human.”

She bit her lip, thinking. “Look, just try for the door before you’re stuck without an exit.”

Mark’s brow furrowed, lips pressing into something between a smile and a frown.

“Okay,” he said slowly. “But what if the door is locked?”

(Y/n)’s eyes flicked to him, guarded. “Then find another one.”

“And if I still end up circling back to the same room?”

“Then you’re not looking for an exit. You’re just stalling.”

His mouth quirked, more wry than amused. “Maybe. Or maybe…” he leaned in slightly, just enough to shift the air between them. “Maybe some rooms are worth getting stuck in.”

Exasperation filled her face. “Mark.”

She said his name like a warning. Like a sigh. Like a bruise she didn’t want him pressing on, even if part of her didn’t mind the weight.

“I don’t…” she hesitated. Then met his gaze--really met it, like she was pleading with him to let it pass through his thick skull. “I don’t want to be the reason you get stuck… Please, just try.”

“Okay,” he said again. Not flippant. Not blindly hopeful. Just steady. Like he understood what she meant, even if he didn’t agree with all of it. “I’ll try.”

(Y/n) exhaled. Not dramatically. Just enough to loosen the breath she’d been holding since the moment got too close.

A beat passed. They sat there, two weapons forged too early in the fire, trying not to need things they couldn’t name.

Then she glanced at the clock. Five minutes had long since passed.

And yet--

She didn’t move.

Didn’t push away.

Didn’t reset.

Instead, she nodded toward the cup he’d been rotating this whole time.

“Drink that again,” she said, deadpan. “Let’s make sure you suffer enough to remember me in a bad light.”

Mark laughed--actually laughed this time. Not the awkward, teen-fumbles kind. The real kind. Like something in his chest loosened.

And when he lifted the cup again in mock salute, (Y/n) laughed with him--moreso at his immediate gag. Letting another five minutes slip through her clock.

--

<<next chp>>

<3 -> @jiyeons-closet @heiankyonoeiyuukun

[rowanthestrange]

Fear.

I get it now, the mirror fucks it up because it itself is a mirror. A mirror of the fear a person has of it, therefore the mirror would cause recursion: mirroring itself forever and it would explode.

So it had to do a big bang attack straight off the bat to create initial fear, but then what it would want? You don’t want to be big and obvious because that’s not actually scary, that’s a threat you can fight, to create the most fear you have to be as light a touch as possible. Just a flicker. Just a whisper.

It’s just Fear, like literally just Fear, the god of Fear, Fear consumed poor Aliss the cook, no skills, no baby, saw everyone die, had to kill her friend. That’s why she’s all Who Turned Out The Lights, Fear consumed her, ate her, like the Vashta Nerada. She’s a husk of Fear.

It might literally just be ambient to the planet, maybe it is the radiation.

And oh how it must have hated being in a reflective-diamond tourist trap - designed, quite probably by the Doctor themselves sometime in the future or a past lifecycle, to be the antithesis of Fear. The universe’s most beautiful Spa resort.

And maybe this was the plan: it had to slowly pare them down to one incredibly frightened individual in order to take over them (like in Midnight) building and building and building and building until it could take a permanent hold in her mind and- Wait. Wait for the inevitable other people to come. No sign of needing to eat, this cook that makes us question the food situation, just that she stayed sat there in the middle of a room, cus she’s already gone.

So what next? You build bigger, right? Well now you see, you don’t want to get too crazy with it like last time - you want to be Big but you also want to get off the planet to spread further. Cus what’s the goal of being Big? Fear breeds. And so by the time they’ve figured out the mirror thing, maybe because it’s an imperfect mirror or maybe because it’s big enough that it can’t be fully destroyed while what remains of the host(s) is still alive and ‘afraid’, it doesn’t get recursioned to death. Cus they’re still afraid, terrified as they run.

If the Fear is ambient, even if it can be stopped in one form, if it got Big enough then the scars are there carrying remnant. And Fear as a concept is ultimately unkillable just able to be made small. But they’re not making it small.

There’s a look of anger in Aliss’s eyes as the Doctor starts to laugh, confidently, because that is the antithesis of Fear. Thus a monstrous form must chase him, bring it back to him. And everyone else is still afraid.

And when it’s just the four of them they’re still afraid enough to coalesce the fear and build and build and build so by the end of even just a few minutes boom you’ve potentially now got another one. Cus Belief makes things real, and Fear is the purest manifestation of that.

And now what’s happened? Not only are you carrying potentially multiple sources of Fear on the ship, not only are there people leaving to tell other people to spread the Fear…

The Doctor told them to nuke the planet. Make sure everyone knows how dangerous it is.

That planet is now going to be a breeding ground for Fear for eons to come and they are the ones who will make sure of it.

[phyrestartr]

HOUND | Miguel x M!Reader

Geneticist!Miguel x Guard!Reader Part 1 W/C: 2.5K | Part 1 of 2

Slight NSFW, zombie AU, apocalypse AU, mentions of exploitation and abuse, body horror, gore, immoral research and experiments, power imbalance, reader is a criminal, miguel is a scientist, dark themes, part 2 ends on a positive note, reader is morally grey, bottom!miguel, top!reader, sorry there's lore lol

Note: Wanted to post this bad boy in full, but the second half sorely needs some revising T-T It should be finished and up fairly soon, though! I hope this is ~intriguing~ for those who like darker stuff! Also I did a light edit on this part, but I really just want to get it out so lol sorry if things sound stupid/don't make sense asdjkf;l

--

There exists a cure.

That's what Alchemax declared. And it was the truth, just not the full truth. Not something the public would be happy with, anyway. 

The so-called "cure" was…unreliable, only recoding the RNA of select individuals for a reason that Alchemax's geneticists struggled to identify for the longest time. But after combing through the files of each expendable inmate and finding similarities, it became clear: those who'd been in the presence of nuclear energy, or high amounts of radiation, were suitable candidates for the vaccine. 

"Guess it's a good thing we didn't shut down those mines," Aaron had sneered at the board meeting. "Otherwise we wouldn't have the army of immune mutants running around for us." 

Miguel rolled his eyes. Sure, the idiot wasn't wrong, but he was taking it too far; plenty had died because of their experiments, and plenty more of the "immune" were sure to die with the unknown side effects of whatever the vaccine was bound to show in a matter of years (or in mere months, if they were unlucky). 

"It's a start," Miguel begrudgingly added. "But intentionally damaging civilian RNA with radiation, and then repairing it with S-2099, especially when we're not aware of any side effects yet? The UN won't have it. Can't imagine civilians would love it either." 

"Well, it's either get bit and die, stay afraid and die, or get painlessly exposed to a blast of radiation and then maybe die if 2099 doesn't fix them like we think," Liv offered with a shrug. "I, for one, would be honoured to die in the name of science." 

Miguel coolly looked over at her. "Thanks for volunteering." 

Liv's expression twisted. The energy in the room would've exploded if it hadn't been for Stone's interjection. 

"We will not be commencing civilian trials. Not until success rates increase with approved subjects provided by the state." The man spoke so steadily, so reasonably, like sacrificing the lives of orange jumpsuits meant nothing. 

They were dismissed soon after. Screens flickered out, holograms faded, and Miguel found himself alone with the other few scientists left at their Nueva York location. 

He stayed seated, vaguely aware of the others filtering out and murmuring amongst themselves, but his thoughts demanded his attention–he knew, even if the government didn't approve of essentially soft-nuking colonies of survivors, that Tyler Stone would find a way to do it, and would label it an accident. The man, his birth father, was ruthless, cold, calculated– 

"Sir?" A voice, your voice, cut through the silence. Miguel looked over his shoulder and found you still waiting, standing perfectly still by the door. 

"Sorry, I was just…" Miguel sighed and rubbed his face before standing. "Nevermind. Don't worry about it." 

Of course, you didn't say anything, instead nodding wordlessly and following your ward out of the room. Each step you took was punctuated by the shifting of your firearm against your thigh and the heavy thumps of your boots against the polished floors. Miguel used to hate your presence, think it unnecessary, but soon he grew to feel comfortable with you as his shadow. 

You, his powerful, mutant guard dog. 

"I can't fucking believe what this is turning into," Miguel muttered on the way to his quarters. "Too many unanswered questions, too many risks. And they don't care? We haven't even run further simulations yet–and we can run simulations with different alpha rays and different subject samples. It'd be harmless." The door hissed open and Miguel walked in, sorely wishing he could slam the door for once. Why did everything have to be automated? 

"In. Now," Miguel called when you stopped short of his residence. You obeyed, wandering inside before the door slid to a close behind you, and locked. 

You had reason to be nervous, Miguel knew that, too. Each key scientist in the building was assigned one of your kind, one of the immune mutants, and were free to do what they wanted with them. Sex, torture, chores–all of it was on the table. All of it had been asked of your kind. Done by your kind. Miguel figured that was why you kept a wall up. You hardly spoke, didn't request anything, never complained–all in an effort to keep the peace between you and your owner.

Miguel threw his white coat aside before stalking up to you. "Let me see," he mumbled as he held your jaw and tilted your head as he shone the light from his phone into your eye. 

Your pupils reacted at twice the speed of a normal human's, growing into the tiniest of pin pricks when the bright white flare assaulted your senses. Your eye twitched the slightest bit, but you remained still for Miguel. 

"Reactive. Not dead. That's good." He put his phone away, and examined the scarlet blotches contrasting against the natural hue of your iris. It was a relatively new side effect experienced by most of your batch, but you were amongst the more severe cases, if not the most severe case. Most of his peers didn't seem concerned by it, and Miguel could understand, seeing as it appeared to only be cosmetic, but the increased reactivity of your pupil accompanied with the bloody colour intrigued Miguel enough to keep tabs on it. 

"Any changes lately? To appetite, sleep, anything?" He asked as he let go of your jaw, nearly smiling as you tried to follow his touch for a moment longer like a sleepy cat. "Maybe neediness?" Miguel teased. 

You huffed lightly through your nose and looked around the main room of Miguel's living space. "Tired, I guess." 

Miguel's nerves smoothed with the sandpaper scratch of your voice. "Tired. Might be the anemia again. We'll draw blood tomorrow, see if you need supplements or another infusion." Miguel found himself mumbling now, going on about your health and your changes, wondering out loud what the best course of action would be to help you adjust to whatever was happening to your body, but you didn't say anything. You never did unless provoked. 

Miguel decided to provoke. He needed to speak, to be spoken to, to hear someone else’s voice right now. "What do you think about all this?" He called from the bathroom after washing up for the night. He poked his head out a moment later when you didn’t comment. 

“I know you were listening,” he prodded again over the toothbrush jammed into the side of his mouth. “The other ones don’t, but you do. I can tell by that look you get.” he waited for you to respond while he brushed his teeth, but you didn’t. You hadn’t moved from your post by his front door, actually, stood against the wall, arms crossed and staring forward like you were listening to everything beyond the door. Miguel wasn’t sure if he’d ever seen you sit down. He didn’t know if you’d ever laid down before. 

After he finished washing up for the night, he decided to try again. 

“You really gonna keep me in the dark?” Miguel asked as he walked up to you, arms crossed as well. He couldn’t help but feel smaller and smaller the longer he waited in silence, waited to hear your gravelled voice. He couldn’t grasp why he was so desperate for a friend suddenly, but he was. He really was, and he wasn’t finding it in you. 

“Forget it. Doesn’t matter anyway,” Miguel mumbled, turning away from you and rubbing his face tiredly. 

“Don't have much of an opinion.”

“What?” Miguel turned back around, brows raised as he waited for you to continue. Your gaze peeled from the ceiling and fell to him, like you were waiting for a reprimand of sorts, but Miguel wouldn’t, not when he tried so hard to get a peep out of you.

You shrugged and looked elsewhere. “Don't care what happens to civilians. Not my problem.” 

“It's the world's problem,” Miguel suggested. He didn't want to start an argument, but he didn't want you to feel so blasé about the fate of everything. “The more civilians that get infected, the more the world loses.” 

“Thought that was a good thing. Last I heard, the world was pretty overpopulated.” You said it so easily. Miguel would have shrugged it off if he didn't know about the blood on your hands, the crimes you'd committed, the evidence that you really, truly, did not give a shit about humanity. 

Miguel scoffed, a bitter, bewildered sort of thing. “Y'know, I used to pity you for this,” he started, gesturing to the soldiered-out state of yourself, “but you might be less human than those things out there.” 

“Probably.” 

“You don't even care,” Miguel laughed again. “Did you care when you killed that family?” 

“An eye for an eye,” you replied. 

“Right, right. Then what about your daughter? Did you care when–” the world spun before his back cracked against the wall. He grabbed your wrist and squeezed when your hands fisted in his shirt, ready to trigger your kill switch with one click of a button on his ring, but he didn't need to; you simply held him there, boring holes into his skull with your diamond-tipped stare. 

“You jokers don't know when to quit,” you said. “Always have to drag a kid into the equation, ‘n then act so fucking shocked when you end up dead ‘cause of it.” A sigh slipped past your lips as you leaned in. Miguel wanted to meet you halfway. “Fuckers like you make murderers out of men like me.”

Oh. The violence rippling through your crackling voice went straight down, into the pit below Miguel's stomach and coiled into something frightfully decadent. He wanted your hands around his neck. He wanted you to mutter more threats into his ear. He wanted–

He wanted you. 

“Let me touch you,” Miguel blurted. “Your skin.” You gave a reaction then, eyes blinking away shock and throat clearing with a strangled grunt, but you didn’t say no. You didn’t reject him. In fact, you looked him up and down in question, curiosity peeking through piercing eyes. 

“You're a deranged fuck, aren't you? Getting all hot ‘n bothered from a threat.” You reached for the straps of your kevlar vest, then, and Miguel’s nerves jolted with the sound of the buckles clicking loose. 

He scrambled to you and held your hands. He wanted to do it himself, to unwrap your bindings and see what laid beneath. Your hands fell, and Miguel took over. 

The warmth bleeding from your clothes intoxicated him. He fumbled with your gear, eager to get to the base of your tight, black shirt and rip it off, but you didn’t try to take over for him–you watched, patient like a dog, letting your master doff your armour at his leisure (or, rather, his frantic, desperate pace). Miguel appreciated it. He wondered if you knew he'd snap if you tried to interfere. 

Soon, your chest was bare. Exposed for him, dotted with memories of cruel bites, bullets, knives and surgical scars all over taught, humming skin. Man shouldn’t be allowed to touch you, Miguel thought. The imperfections were so gloriously human. You were so perfectly alive, standing here with him, breathing, emanating heat, allowing him to do what he pleased–he was the luckiest man on Earth. 

Miguel couldn’t look you in the eyes as his broad palm pressed against your chest, right over the rhythm of your soul. His pants strained and tightened more as his touch wandered through the valleys of firm muscle; what did the rest of you look like? What did you look like when you fought, or when you fucked? 

His hand slipped down to the tight adonis belt cinching your waist, and then lower, following the trail of fine hair disappearing beneath the waistband peeking above your cargos. The bunching and folding of thick material melted Miguel's mind in a vat of suggestion and insatiability–were you really that big, or was that fabric just making it an illusion? 

He didn't need to wait to find out, though, not when you guided his hand down over the very real curve of your goods packed away. And, yes, you were big. Miguel's eyes snapped up to yours. A smug look greeted him.

“Looked like you needed some encouragement.”

Miguel might have laughed if his heart weren't suffocating him, climbing up his throat. Your clothed cock under his hand was ruining his cognitive functions too, to be fair. 

His fingers, long, clumsy things, hurried at your buttons and the zipper keeping everything in check. Miguel's ears filled with the rhythmic drumming of desire when he finally got the damn thing undone, but you grabbed his wrist. You stopped him. 

Miguel scoffed out a held breath and tried to wrench free, but your grip held firm. “You can't back out after–” But when he looked at you, he froze still; your expression electrified the senses, the slightest narrowing and shifting of uneasy eyes freezing Miguel colder and colder by the second. 

“Bathroom. Now.” You popped just one of those buttons back into place before turning to the door. 

“Wh–” But you shoved him, hard, and sent him stumbling into the sterile white space as explosive carnage rippled through the room in his wake. The thing collided into you seconds after you'd gotten your charge out of the blast zone. 

It was big. A mass of human features and flesh and maybe something else weighing on a hulking frame. You barked a name, maybe the name of one of your fellow watch dogs, but it didn't change the thing's trajectory as it tore towards Miguel on all fours like a hound out of hell.

But you were quicker. You grabbed it by the nape and ripped it off its warpath with too much effort, just narrowly avoiding it barreling into the attached room by seconds. Its momentum, forced toward the wall, threw it into a dizzied tantrum; limbs flailed, mouths gnashed, and a symphony of mismatched voices wailed from their putrid prison. 

Miguel's body locked. What ifs plagued him, suddenly. If it got him. If it bit him. If you hadn't been there. What if–

“Close the damn door,” you demanded, and your voice sounded a bit shaky, too. Miguel looked at your broad back as you stood bravely in the way of the beast and its target. “Doctor–” 

“I–but you–?” Miguel stumbled and choked on his words and his reasoning. He didn't want you to fight. He didn't want to die. He didn't want you to die. Miguel hit the button to make it closed, but the door stalled halfway.

“Fuck it.” Barbs burst from your fingertips and dug into the door, forcing it to bend to your will and close. Miguel didn't like how you disappeared inch by inch. He didn't like seeing that thing behind you get up. He didn't like that look you gave him just before the door snapped shut. 

The next few minutes passed like years.

[driedpeanuts69]

STRANGERS IN THE NIGHT

pairing: tony stark x f!reader

summary: it’s 2013 and tony stark is receiving the backlash of the alien invasion on new york. constant anxiety attacks, the cruel thoughts of never been enough — until he met her.

warnings: mentions of anxiety attacks, but ultimately just fluff

This was ridiculous, so ridiculous, he knew it was ridiculous. He was Tony Stark — he wasn’t a child anymore, or a drunk-fuelled teenager. He can’t be acting like this when he is Iron Man, a hero of the people.

Yet, he was.

The heavy weight on his chest was non-stop and he wondered to whoever was listening on why this was happening to him. Why the drags of mental health had chipped away at his brain when really, he should be fine.

He wasn’t fine.

He hasn’t been fine since that day.

The air crushing feeling of dragging a nuke through a wormhole heading to space in just a titanium suit. He was only human after all, a selfless human deemed selfish despite his clear acts to prove otherwise.

He could feel tears resting at the corners of his brown eyes as his fingers laced together against his chest. Tony didn’t know where to go when the first anxiety attack hit, he just knew he needed fresh air.

It was early in the morning and no other Avenger’s in the new-appointed tower was awake or even aware that Tony was around. So, he left in a hurry down the elevator and sat in a staggered state on the first bench in the street.

Warm lights flickered from lampposts and the cold breeze of NYC’s weather sent goosebumps against his bare arms. Sometimes when he exhaled deeply, a cloud of cold air would leave.

But then, there was a presence. And it wasn’t harsh, or scary, or even sceptical. He just didn’t want to talk to anyone, especially fans. So he kept his eyes forward and untuned.

“Hey—“

Can I have your autograph?

“—are you alright?”

Tony’s lips fell agape, shocked and bewildered. He turned to his left and saw a woman looking down at him. She was the epitome of an angel. Soft locks of brown hair fell across her shoulders and the warm glow of lights created a halo above her perfect face.

Then she laughed, and he really thought he was in heaven.

“Hey,” she said again, clutching onto her jacket. “Tony, right?”

“Right.” She smiled, and there was something so exciting in her smile. “And you are?”

“Y/N.” God, her smile. “So, are you alright, Tony?”

There was a tiny switch in his brain bordering on the level if to share or not; he decided not to. But then the more he looked at her, the more his shell chipped away. There was something in her eyes that made her so inviting.

He was in trouble.

Serious trouble.

“Peachy.” He responded, flashing a grin. “What is a uh, pretty woman like you doing out here so late?”

She laughed — Lord help me — and sat down next to him. She crossed her legs and turned her body towards him and that was when he could get a really good look.

This woman beside him was in scrubs, blue with a great yellow sticker that said ‘visitor’. Her hair was pushed back with round-rimmed glasses with a brown hue and freckles adorned her face. She looked young, mature too.

“My shift just ended.” She checked the watch on her wrist. “Realistically, I should’ve finished at 5 but,” she just shrugged.

“You’re a nurse?”

She raised her brows and smirked, “Psychologist. I was sent in as a consultant but my patient had an emergency surgery. And then, well the rest would go against patient confidentiality.”

Tony bit his lower lip and grinned. “Very professional.” He then rolled his head along his shoulders and gave her a dazed stare. “And here I thought you was just a nurse, shame on me.”

“Shame on you.”

He grinned once more before looking back into the distance. His heart was steady now, there was no shaking — whatever layer of sweat he once had was dissipated. Maybe it was because she was a distraction (or a piece of heaven) but whatever it was, she helped. Somehow.

“Have you tried breathing exercises? It sounds stupid, but it works like a charm.”

Tony slowly looked back at her, brows raised and lips agape.

“For anxiety attacks, or panic attacks.” He gave her a questioning look so she smiled softly at him.

“How did you—“

“Know?” She pointed at him. “I have a PhD in psychology. And, I used to get them terribly when I was younger.”

He chuckled. “Of course.”

“And… not to say I’m observant or anything but, well—“ She reached over and swiped the skin under his eye. Gentle, soft — a touch like no other. Tony practically melted into it. “You was crying.”

“That’s a tug to my masculinity.” He chuckled. “Thank you, Doc.”

She smiled once more and followed his stare to the emptiness in front of him. Quiet, alone, together. Tony can’t remember the last time he was near someone at his lowest, not like this at least. Not a stranger who stepped in through the night and blessed him with hands so soft and words so sweet.

“You’re too kind.” He stated, like it was a fact so strong it was hard to say otherwise. “That can get you in trouble.”

She nervously bit her lip and murmured something under her breath. “Trouble? Maybe. But sometimes people need it, need to know there’s more to this world than hate and war.”

Tony hummed, “Maybe.”

“You never know what you might change with words alone.” She downcast her eyes to her interlocked hands and sighed. “It’s a powerful tool.”

“A stupid tool.” He interjected. “Words get you no where.”

“That’s your problem.” She playfully shoved him and he laughed along with it. “You can’t fight yourself out of intergalactic space wars and believe that’s it.”

“Oh God, are you a fan?”

She laughed again, this time it echoed across the vast darkness and soothed his heavy heart. “No, no!” She laughed again. “I live in New York. My favourite Bodega got destroyed! I mean, I was hiding out in my office — very scary.”

“Office? You’re private?”

Shyly, she tucked a strand of hair behind her golden jewelled ears and flashed a flattered smile. “I am.”

“How old are you?”

“30.” Then she cringed. “29.” She crossed her other leg over. “I turn thirty two weeks today.”

Tony smirked and rested his arm along the wooden back of the bench. He was so close to her shoulders, where he could just wrap his arm around her like his usual Playboy self. Maybe get something out of this. But he couldn’t, he wouldn’t — he didn’t want to. She was something else.

“Happy birthday.”

“In two weeks time.”

“Blesses and blesses.”

She chuckled, “What does that even mean?”

“I don’t know.” He shrugged. “Sounds fitting.”

She laughed some more, and he wondered if she always laughed like this. Maybe she doesn’t laugh and he’s such an enigma that she can’t stop. Or maybe she’s just such a joyous person, and she has to laugh because she knows how infectious it is.

He laughed along with her.

“Sorry about the Bodega.” It felt weird apologising, but he thought he had to. Or maybe he owed it to her, or himself.

“Sorry?” She frowned. “Don’t be sorry. It wasn’t your fault.”

He scoffed. He didn’t believe that, or believe her. But then he caught her stare and maybe she was right. Her hand stretched out and she carefully cupped his — so soft.

“I was watching the news when it was all happening. I remember the terror everyone was going through.” She rubbed her thumb along his tanned skin, his heart was beating too fast. “But, you was there. Everyone thought you died. That’s- what you went through must’ve been horrible; I can’t even describe it.”

He cupped his other hand around hers. “It was nothing - no sweat.” Then she gave him a pointed look and he crumbed under the pressure. “It was sweat. A lot of sweat.”

It was silent again. But never the silence Tony was used to; the silence where he could feel everything but hear nothing while his breathing became erratic. This type of silence was warm, appreciative and calm. Comforting at most.

But then he shot up and turned to her, his face screwed in deep confusion. “Why do you care?”

A question so harsh was met with melodies as her chest bubbled and she grinned ear to ear. He only looked more confused, and then her smile fell dull. “Oh… you’re being serious.” Nervously tucking a strand of hair away, she offered her best meek smile. “You’re a person, Tony. Of course I care.”

“But why?”

“Why not? Where would people be if they didn’t care for one another?”

He shrugged. “Alone. Probably.”

“Are you alone?”

That was a heavy question.

“Not right now.” He lolled his head to the side and got caught up in the constellation on her sky. There was something about her that was so truth-telling, an impossible feeling that he couldn’t ever lie. “I am. Alone.” He sighed. “Are you trying to assess me?”

“No!” She laughed again. “I’m off-duty. I’m just, being a someone who can listen.”

“Someone who can listen…” It sounded strange on his lips. “You’re something else, you know?”

“Flattery from Tony Stark. I’m one lucky woman.”

He smiled. “I’m one lucky man.”

Silence loomed over once more and there was an understanding that this was their goodbye, an end of an interaction unlike any other. Maybe Tony didn’t want it to end. Maybe she didn’t either.

“I should…”

“Yeah.”

She cleared her throat and stood up. Even then, Tony still held on to her hand. “Tony—“

“I know, I know.” He grinned before bringing her hand close to his lips, a small peck on the softness of her knuckles as a sort-of goodbye. “Is it weird to say I don’t want this to end?���

She chuckled. “I think it means you need to talk to people more.” His eyes fell sunken yet his smile stayed strong. It was all in the eyes, it’s always the eyes. She leant forward — inches away from him. “It’s not weird at all.”

With one final action, she kissed his cheek.

“Goodnight, Tony.”

He frowned and squeezed her hand once more. “Thank you, Doc.”

[fearcrowz]

Hey, I saw the ask just now and I wanted to let you know that I've been thinking of you, too. I had no idea if you were going through something rough, but I figured it was mostly cause I nuked my Twitter account and i know you were mainly active there (can't peruse twitter without an account so jokes on me) I do miss you and I'm glad you're doing okay and I hope things get even better for you. If you ever need to talk, hit me up, ok? Miss you and your art and I'm wishing the absolute best for you.

Thank you for thinking about me. It makes me feel a bit better I am a thought. The loneliness I dread through is suffocating so these are flickers of light that's nice. And no worries Twitter is a sht show for everyone, I'm only sticking around there cuz most of my followers won't follow me elsewhere OTL (another reason I was super sadge)

Much love to you and our silly talks about cute ratty men and monsters ehehe

[bigusbossus]

You ever feel like it shouldve been big boss that killed kaz instead of ocelot/liquid. You ever feel like he should’ve killed Kaz. seppuku style. with his own hands. his own machete. idk what would lead to them fighting whatever or whenever but thats like. Thats it. Kaz is on the ground. he tells big boss to kill him. calls him a coward if he doesn’t. and big boss does it, disemboweling kaz then grabs him by his ponytail and slits his throat but doesn’t decapitate him completely….so the birds don’t peck at his head…*biting fist*

idk why this gave me a boanar but yas... finishing what they started so long ago but this time theres no hidden grenade, the fighting spirit that Boss fell in love with is gone and its his fault, Kaz is kneeling in front of him, he can almost see his short bleached hair styled in a pompadour, sun tanned skin, and the undying fire in his eyes. But that's not how Kaz is now, his skin has gotten pale from the Alaskan conditions, and the light in his eyes are barely a flicker, but he looks as ready to die as he did back in '72. I think Kaz would take it like a champ, a last fuck you to Boss by not showing any fear, he's had no control of his life and he'd be damned if he had no control over how he dies either. Boss has taken everything from Kaz, the least he could do is give him honor as he dies but that he might even struggle with (ughnnn...... theres a perfectly nice hole in kaz's belly to stick a weenor in....just saying) but if he really sticks by his word, lets kaz have just this one thing, then he'd stay by Kaz's body for a while, maybe say some prayers under his breath to let him pass peacefully to the afterlife and before he leaves gives him a chaste kiss on his cold dead lips. i think bb would tell himself he dosnt fell anything but that night he gets wasted at a bar and goes home with a hot, young, tan, blonde guy hooked to his arm

anyway au where bibo was allowed to leave the patriots sometimes and did this or like au where while yes he was horribly disfigured he made it out alive and escaped. think maybe he was wearing something under his clothes that helped him not burn that much . because like. ur telling me this guy survived being tested on with nukes, falling into a river and literally dying, being stepped on by a metal gear, being blown up and falling out of a chopper into a ocean, and other equally horrific stuff but not a little makeshift flame thrower? be so fr with me rn

[bloodgulchblog]

First section of Touchstone, insane Miller-has-a-crush-on-Master-Chief fic premise.

It is not currently nsfw. It is currently running away from me as I relish in the opportunity to flop around in this space in Halo lore like a crow in a rain puddle.

But anyway, here's how it's going so far. (Reprints the thing I posted before for coherency, mostly it's Miller suffering, eventually once I feel like I have a substantial amount of fanfiction built up here I might post it to ao3 but who knows)

—

Directing Blue Team is different from directing Crimson, or Majestic, or any other Spartan-IV team. It shouldn’t be. A Spartan fireteam is a Spartan fireteam, and Spartan-IV outcomes are equal or superior to Spartan-II. This is the official line. Miller has all the data rattling around in his head that would confirm it, all the performance metrics and wargames statlines and field reports.

But data’s only one piece of a puzzle. The other piece is the VISR feeds streaming across Miller’s display, pooling together the four perspectives that make up the whole of the mission. 

Kelly-087. Fred-104. Linda-058. John-117, the Master Chief himself.

They speak very little, they move in perfect concert, the whole execution of every objective the wargames protocol spits and Miller calls out for them is ruthlessly, antiseptically clean.

If Crimson is like a rocket launcher, the Spartan-IIs feel like a goddamn tactical nuke.

Directing Blue Team is a rush.

“Enjoying yourself?” Roland asks, the surprise lighting up all the muscles in Miller’s shoulders and making his teeth click together. The yellow figure of the Infinity’s AI, arms folded behind his back and brows arched, has co-opted the workstation’s holo display. He manages to project the full energy of someone leaning on the back of Miller’s chair despite lacking both the body and the weight to lean.

Miller feels his ears burn, like he’s been somehow caught doing… something.

He’s not going to analyze exactly what that something is or why he feels that way about watching Blue Team sighting in on a Promethean Knight, right now.

“...Sure. Just putting Blue Team through their paces,” he replies, starting off cautiously neutral. Roland hasn’t done anything yet. There’s a chance he won’t do anything, or say anything. Miller can be the bigger person. Miller can offer Roland the chance to better his track record vis a vis the doing and saying of things.

The Master Chief makes a hand signal, invisible on his cam but Miller sees it flicker in triplicate across team feeds before they all start moving. Fred-104 pops from cover to herd the Knight, tightly placed AR groups forcing it to move back before it has a chance to hit him with its scattershot. Linda-058, further off up a stone ledge where she’s been cleaning Watchers out of the air, fires a round that slices through one side of the Knight’s carapace and bursts out the other with a flare of damaged orange hardlight. It staggers and step-turns to hunt the sniperfire, and immediately gets hit from the back by Kelly-087, lightning fast with a shotgun blast that shreds the rest of the rear armor and exposes the Knight’s glowing core.

Then there’s the Master Chief. He slides in from the flank, closing immediately to drive in a knife. The Knight staggers forward and the Chief mounts up, tipping the big construct with a powerful twist of his body while he adjusts the angle of the blade. There’s nothing random about the stab, Miller can see him pull the Knight’s core with one hand while the other slices into the contacts along its rim. It screams as something pops with one disdainful flex of the Chief’s wrist, and he jumps away clean before the Knight dissolves into sparks and cinders under him.

Roland whistles appreciatively.

Miller swallows.

It’s here that he gets the first inkling that maybe, possibly, he might have a problem.

“Very nice,” Roland is saying. “Ooh, Miller. Miller! Can I tell Majestic how much this beats their time?”

“Good work, Blue Team,” Miller says, ignoring him. “That was the last target. Head back to the first waypoint, and we’ll pull you out of the sim.”

“Spoilsport,” Roland grouses. “I think a little competition would be good for Majestic! Light a real fire under ‘em.”

“Roland, clear the channel,” says the Master Chief before Miller has to do it himself. “Miller, it was a smooth run. Good job, Spartan.”

Miller’s heart doesn’t skip a beat, because that’s the sort of trouble reserved for mere mortals with organs not reinforced by polythread weave. 

And that’s the only reason.

“Thanks.”

It’s lame, Thanks, but the word gets out of his mouth in one piece and he couldn’t be more grateful.

Roland’s trying to lure the Master Chief into giving him some pointers that he can offer next time Thorne’s team runs this exercise, no doubt because he’s bored and would love to rile Majestic up, but the Chief can hold his own and Miller’s lost focus on it in the face of what he’s learning.

Because oh.

Oh.

He has a problem.

—

MJOLNIR variants, the names of specific patterns for alien weapons, the shape and flow of familiar combat situations. The ways his teams fall together, the ways the personalities play off one another or don’t. How something can happen, and someone can suddenly be different from how they were before.

The things Miller knows snap into focus every time he recognizes them, like the targeting reticle blinking awake on his HUD when the MJONLIR’s gauntlet contacts clock a supported weapon. He’s always liked knowing things, even made it his business to know things when he could be relying on a machine to pull up the details. Memory is faster, sharper, lets him fit facts together into something that might actually help. Maybe. Maybe it’s also just a certain amount of residual nerdery that the UNSC decided it liked enough not to sand off of him.

Usually, he likes this about himself too.

But right now, the new information slotting itself so helpfully into all Miller’s awareness is that the Master Chief is hot. The Master Chief is really really hot, and he can’t stop noticing.

Just not thinking about him doesn’t work. The Infinity is the biggest ship in the fleet and has a population to match, but in the grand scheme of things? She’s a small town, and Chief’s a big resident. People still talk over the rumors about the Biko peace talks, the whole slate of rumors about Requiem, about Cortana, about even quieter and older rumors only some of the Spartans are allowed to know and only most of them know if ONI isn’t asking.

People wonder stuff about Master Chief.

“How’d he take it?” is what Carmichael wonders over lunch. 

Miller twists his fork in his noodles.

“He’s…” Miller searches for a word that has nothing to do with anything he has possibly felt ever in his life. “Professional.”

“That bad?” Carmichael’s eyebrows lift. It’s more than just thinking it’s funny, though.

“Not bad,” Miller clarifies, maybe a little too quickly. “It’s just…”

Carmichael’s scheduled to do some trial runs with Blue Team, too. Palmer hasn’t said anything, but Blue Team hasn’t had to work under a Spartan mission handler since John-117 came back from the dead. Blue Team also hasn’t been out in the field since the disaster at the Biko peace talks. Everyone on S-Deck is smart enough to figure out what’s happening without having their hands held.

Carmichael’s real question, the one Miller’s trying to answer, is: How is the legendary defender of humanity doing with his wings clipped?

The answer to that question should absolutely not be hot.

“If he’s upset about it – and I’m not saying he is – he’s not showing it.”

Carmichael nods, accepting this. 

“So, how do they run?”

This one’s worse to answer. It’s so much worse. Miller can hear his pulse in his ears and feel the fork digging into his hand.

He laughs nervously. He hopes Carmichael can’t tell.

“I won’t spoil it for you.”

He can feel Carmichael studying him. Carmichael’s older, all of the other mission handlers are older than Miller and most of them are from a Spartan-IV class or two before his.

It doesn’t bother him, most of the time, but it is enough to create a divide between him and the few other people who share this highly specific job.

“Alright Miller, keep your secrets,” Carmichael says. “May the best man win, eh?”

Miller manages not to choke. Oh. Oh, no.

“That’s not what I meant, I-”

“Don’t worry about it.” Carmichael’s tone is amicable, but a little of the friendliness has slipped back. They’re not in cahoots sharing information anymore. This has gone totally professional. 

Carmichael has completely misread this. Maybe Miller has too. He didn’t realize Carmichael might care about who gets assigned Blue Team?

Maybe it would be a prestige thing? God damn it.

He tries to think of how to fix this, to make it less awkward to share workspace with Carmichael for… for however long this might last? But he can’t do it.

Carmichael finishes eating and leaves the mess first, and Miller’s shoulders sink.

He goes back over the testrun in his head as he picks at what’s left on his tray, appetite gone. Did he miss anything during the mission? Any hesitations or bad calls? What’s Commander Palmer going to say when she finally records feedback? Was it a clean run? He thinks maybe?

Is this even a competition?

Is there any chance they’ll assign Blue Team to him?

Miller thinks about the hole in his roster that’s been there since February, and his gut still twists. Fireteam Castle, all six Spartans, lost to Covenant remnant shooting down their Pelican. All the arguments with himself about whether or not there was something he could’ve done better, arguments he’s had with himself hundreds of times since, start rising to the surface of Miller’s thoughts.

He forces them all away and rests his face in his hand, fingers on one temple and thumb on the other. He breathes out, long and slow, focusing on the transfer of air until there isn’t any left and his head’s quiet again.

No. They’re not going to put him in charge of Blue Team, and it’s going to be for the best for all concerned.

[milfstalin]

every time i try and make the ai tell me about yagoda's dildo it's like a 50/50 chance of it not nuking itself

INT. YAGODA'S KREMLIN APARTMENT – NIGHT

The room is a chaotic museum of excess. A stuffed bear stands in the corner, a saber dangling from its paw. Shelves groan under the weight of confiscated icons, mismatched china, and a single, incongruous dildo. A projector hums, casting flickering images of dubious content onto the wall. RYKOV, BUKHARIN, and YAGODA sit around a table cluttered with bottles, glasses, and half-eaten zakuski. All three are deeply, gloriously drunk.

RYKOV (slurring, gesturing with a bottle) Yagoda, you old devil, this place is a fucking museum of sin. How do you sleep at night? Or do you just… (mimes snorting cocaine) …stay awake forever?

YAGODA (dry, lighting a cigarette) Sleep is for the innocent, Rykov. And as you can see, I am not burdened by that condition.

BUKHARIN (nervously pacing, glass in hand) This apartment is a microcosm of the contradictions of our epoch! The material excess, the moral decay, the— (notices the dildo on the mantel) —what in Marx’s name is that doing here?

YAGODA (deadpan) A gift from a comrade. I keep it as a reminder of the… flexibility required in our line of work.

RYKOV (laughing, spilling vodka) Flexibility! Ha! You’re a poet, Yagoda. A fucking poet. But tell me, how’s it feel, eh? Preparing Zinoviev and Kamenev for their big show? You’ve got them singing like canaries, don’t you?

BUKHARIN (agitated) It’s a travesty! A grotesque parody of justice! Zinoviev, Kamenev—they’re old Bolsheviks! They helped build this state, and now we’re tearing it down with their confessions!

YAGODA (shrugging) They confessed. What can I do? The Party demands it. The people demand it. And Stalin… (takes a long drag) …demands it most of all.

RYKOV (leaning in, conspiratorial) Bullshit. You’re the one pulling the strings, Yagoda. You’ve got them by the balls. Admit it.

YAGODA (smirking) If I had them by the balls, Rykov, they’d have confessed faster. No, this is… delicate work. You don’t just break a man. You make him break himself. It’s an art.

BUKHARIN (pacing faster, almost shouting) An art? An art? This is madness! We’re devouring our own, Yagoda! The Revolution is eating its children!

YAGODA (coolly) Better the Revolution eats its children than its children eat the Revolution. Isn’t that right, Bukharin?

RYKOV (laughing again) He’s got you there, Nikolai! You’re always so… so… (waves hand vaguely) …philosophical. But Yagoda, he’s practical. Cold as a Siberian winter, this one.

BUKHARIN (stopping, glaring at Yagoda) And what happens when they come for you, Genrikh? When Yezhov starts sharpening his knives? You think Stalin will protect you? You think you’re indispensable?

YAGODA (pouring himself another drink) Indispensable? No. But I am… difficult to replace. Yezhov may want my job, but he doesn’t have the stomach for it. He’s a clerk, not a butcher.

RYKOV (raising his glass) To the butcher, then! Long may he reign!

BUKHARIN (bitterly) To the butcher. May he remember that even butchers can be led to the block.

YAGODA (raising his glass, smiling faintly) To the block, then. And to those of us who’ll still be standing when the axe falls.

They drink in silence for a moment, the weight of their words hanging in the air. Then RYKOV belches loudly, breaking the tension.

RYKOV (grinning) You know what this place needs? Music. Real music. Not this… (gestures at the flickering pornographic film) …whatever the hell this is.

YAGODA (dryly) It’s called art, Rykov. You wouldn’t understand.

BUKHARIN (collapsing into a chair, muttering) Art. Madness. Butchery. What’s the difference anymore?

RYKOV (standing, swaying slightly) I’ll tell you the difference. One’s got a tune, and the other’s got blood. Now, where’s your gramophone, Yagoda? Let’s have a proper song before they come for us all.

YAGODA gestures vaguely toward a corner, where a gramophone sits buried under a pile of women’s fur coats. RYKOV stumbles over and begins digging it out. BUKHARIN stares into his glass, lost in thought. YAGODA watches them both, his expression unreadable.

YAGODA (quietly, to himself) Before they come for us all. Indeed.

The gramophone crackles to life, playing a jaunty Soviet march. RYKOV begins dancing clumsily, knocking over a stack of confiscated books. BUKHARIN doesn’t move, his face a mask of despair. YAGODA lights another cigarette, his eyes fixed on the flickering images on the wall.

FADE OUT.

[vanosslirious]

BBS Dialogue Prompts #358

ʙʙꜱ ᴅɪᴀʟᴏɢᴜᴇ & ꜱᴇɴᴛᴇɴᴄᴇ ꜱᴛᴀʀᴛᴇʀꜱ: [ 9 ]

VANOSSGAMING

You look like a bag of shit.

You're a short ass clown.

Why don't you come find out?

You look like a puppet.

Oh, are we gonna start like that, okay?

Ow, what the fuck, that's not fair!

Hold on, I wasn't ready!

Did that do anything at all?

Oh my God, I can't do this!

Are you guys seriously going to walk that slow?

I have to do everything for you guys, huh?

I had to use my superpower to walk across lava in the crack in the rock while you guys stand there.

Don't tell me to hurry!

Don't you use that tone of voice with me!

Just kidding…why am I on fire?

Is that close enough for you?

I should probably kill somebody along the way.

Yep, they know I'm here.

It's time to die.

I've trained long and hard for this.

NOGLA

He said it again!

I got a cooked salmon…I’m good.

That's how the riddle works, right?

I did four laps of this map and I haven't seen you.

I actually have no fucking clue, I have no clue.

Nice little throwback there.

How did you get banned already, bro?

Who's minding the dog?

I didn't get that on camera.

It's like a little competition.

TERRORISER

Maybe we come back with more people.

I'm so over this session already.

Well, if my teammate didn't leave me and vent'd away from me!

If anyone wants to acknowledge my existence.

You added absolutely nothing to this!

That's the new code.

I can't see, man.

You're fucking full of shit.

They don't know that we have a nuke.

I'm gonna test the snowball theory.

SILENTDROIDD

Oh, can we watch?

Slenderman's still there.

The lights are flickering and shit.

You're supposed to jump!

You just have to grab it, you know.

This game sucks, huh.

See you guys at the finish line, okay.

Freaking guy brought his freaking toy.

Okay…we need to get out of here.

Oh, damn, it's freaking dark.

SMII7Y

I think I’m going to kill you.

We’re super friendly here.

We could’ve been there if it weren’t for these meddling kids.

Welcome to the dark side.

Karma builds up, I respect it.

Neutral, I need to take him out.

What do you mean, you get them all the time.

I’m starting to feel something.

Who the hell are you to tell me to hurry up?

Maybe it should stop, my bad.

KRYOZ

I won't fall because I'm tough and strong.

Shout out to those four.

Well, yeah, I did it so you can get up easier.

I mean, that might stop ya.

Hey, if you don't jump, we'll give you free waffles.

Oh my God, he got fucked.

I got paid less.

Are you my son?

It's not mud, it's blood, you stupid bitch.

Mm, it went right through you.

GRIZZY

That's a fucking shark!

Your dreams are dead.

Why do you have so much ammo?

Why'd you come for me?

I keep grabbing you by accident.

What made you think that?

Okay, what the fuck is going on?

Is that a fucking shark?

Whatever dude, I fucking slipped.

I didn't mean to throw it at you.

BIGPUFFER

Can we suck off other vampire's?

Okay, let's fight 'em.

I might die before I get up here.

Our friend's drowning.

I'm being shot!

Get your balls out of my face, please.

I can't move on, I'm fucked!

Kill grandma for me.

Wait, she's almost dead.

Oh my God, there's so much blood in the kitchen.

BLARG

I don't know why I'm creeping like this.

Anyway, fella's, I gotta bounce.

Can you guys let me in, I'm in the backyard.

Good luck, fellas'.

Good, because I'm gonna kiss him.

Someone help a motherfucker, goddamn.

We got a 40$ start.

I'm in Minecraft!

Hold on, let me get a little closer!

I'm the last one left, boys!

[godmybackhurts]

It was eerily quiet.

Bodies littered the floor, only visible because of the flashlights on their rifles. They didn't look infected, but you couldn't be too sure. So he set them on fire.

"Think that should be it?" Smithson asked, wary of any more coming.

"I hope so." Estrin was terrified, nearly shaking in his armor. But he couldn't show it. Showing your fear was weakness, and in war, weakness is death.

The pair continued on, the lights flickering in the halls of the UNSC Dead Man Walking. He checked left, she checked right.

"We need to make it to the medbay, we'll be able to lock up there. Then there will be no other way in. When we arrive at Mars, we should br able to radio in and let them know," the British woman said.

"Understood. We should be passing the mess hall soon, makes it four doors to the nearest elevator, and two more floors down."

With that they became silent. One would occasionally turn around to watch their back, just in case their motion sensors missed something. But they always felt like they were being watched, be it from vents or the shadows in the corners.

They were just going to go on shore leave, but ONI had decided, apparently, to ship Flood forms on their ship too, the bastards.

After several agonizing minutes of practically crawling through the ship, barely blinking, they made it to the elevator. Finally. He pressed the down button while she kept aim towards the door, ready for any Flood to pop out. Their hearts were racing, and they could feel it in their ears, waiting for the elevator to arrive. After what felt like hours, it did, making a soft dinging noise before opening. Nothing was inside. Unfortunately, the noise was loud enough to alert the horde on their level, and they soon heard animalistic screaming and hooting, as well as the sound of running feet getting closer and closer.

The pair ran into the elevator, and the door closed just in time to take them down two levels. Once they got down, their weapons were up again, ready for a fight. The drill began again. He checked left, she checked right, they walked together in step, slowly and quietly.

His HUD told him his heart was beating at 130 BPM, and that Smithson wasn't doing much better. They needed to get to the medbay and fast, before anything more happened.

Red flash on his motion sensor. Not good.

"Behind us," he whispered, jabbing a thumb back for good measure.

He turned around. Nothing. Not wanting anything to get the jump on them, he continued walking backwards. Only 100 more feet. Plenty of time to get attacked.

There. A face, in the darkness. Human, but... not. Too grotesque, too broken. Someone, no, something had already gotten to them. He motioned to quicken the pace, and she obliged. As long as the combat form didn't attack, they'd be fine.

Another red flash. Behind him. He ignored it. Smithson had that side covered. They'd be fine. They had to be. Estrin was really regretting deciding against sitting in his lawnchair near one of the cliffs with a cooler of beer. But now wasn't the time for thinking about what-could-have-beens, now was the time for thinking of what-is.

At long last, they made it to the medbay. Smithson cycled it open, while he kept watch. No more sign of the combat form. She went in first and he came in after, hitting the button to close and lock the door. There would be no way in from outside it. And he'd be damned if he was going out.

They took off their helmets and breathed, happy to still be alive. Now it'd only be 12 more days until the trip through Slipspace finished, and they'd be able to contact the Mars Port Authority and tell them about the situation. If the two of them were lucky, the UNSC would send in Spartans to do the job. If they were unlucky, they'd just get nuked. But for now, they were alive. And that was worth celebrating.

[asstrongasyouthink]

my beloved took me for the best adventure ever last night, which was a spontaneous drive north to see the lights, and we got to the lake and it was like:

lights from refinery

lights from canada

clouds

lights from nuke tower

hey wait are those clouds flickering

and we sat on one of the biggest stumps ive ever seen and talked about Great Thunderstorms Past we had seen over the same lake before we knew each other and like. i still want to see the northern lights lookin like they do in balto one day but you know what accomplishing a life goal is accomplishing a life goal

[akittyboy]

Another Life (part 1): Eunyu

Sweet Home FF | Hyunsu x Eunhyuk

Summary: After everything has been said and done, there are still things that Hyunsu doesn't seem to remember. Warning/tags: mild angst, partial memory loss, emotional constipation, slow burn, mxm, no smut, found family, getting together, mild gore. Word count: approx. 16k for the whole thing, but will be posted in parts.

A/N: This takes place sometime after the video montage at the end of season 3, and then jumps back a little to season 1. I hope the characters won't be too OOC but this show has me in a chokehold and I had to do SOMETHING. Just know that creative liberties were taken… and by that, I mean that I watched My Demon after binging all seasons of Sweet Home, so any sort of lines are blurred at this rate. Anyhow, imagine that the trio of Hyunsu, Eunhyuk and Eunyu eventually break off from the rest of the survival camp to do their own thing. This is a slow drip, mostly about feelings and an attempt at character study so don't expect any plot. The title of this fic was inspired by Tom Odell’s song Another Love, as in ...all my tears have been used up on another love. Also, I'm new to tumblr so be kind >_< thought I'd try this thing out. Cheers~

.

.

.

There's tentative relief on weary faces for the first time in many months when the monster pandemic hits a perplexing development; being devoured by one's inner demon isn't the end — it's the beginning of an evolutionary process only known to the elusive laws of the universe. Nonetheless, the primal fear of the unknown is still there, lurking in the recess of everyone's minds, even if it's not as paralyzing as it once were when the bizarre outbreaks first started.

Hyunsu stares somberly from the vantage point of a rooftop, or what's left of it really, at the demolished skyline that glitters in the far distance. The once tall, silvery sky-scrapers are now noting but crumbling blocks of pixels — admittedly, his whole damn life feels like a crumbling Tetris game at this rate. 

With a heavy chest, Hyunsu closes his eyes on the absurd view. There's no use to mourn what once were. They're way past it, heading into a new era of humanity. And to think that it wasn't a world war nor an atomic nuke that had caused all of this mess, but a freaking curse. So before another peaceful moment gets cruelly taken away from him, Hyunsu leans against the railing, elbows perched atop it and tips his head up to face the delicate sun, enjoying its lukewarm rays caressing his skin.

It's an early spring. The morning chill still nips at bare cheeks and unclothed fingertips, but right around noon the bleak rays of the burning star, slowly but steadily, manage to warm whatever's left of their collapsing civilization. The natural order of things doesn't stop for anything. Like a sight for sore eyes the wild nature thrives now that there are no humans selfishly plundering its dwindling reserves or polluting its untouched terrains. But all the same, the bustling, green forests with rustling foliage and chirping birds are nothing but a mocking delusion of serenity, covertly hiding nightmare-inducing horrors within.

It's the silence, Hyunsu decides. It's so much worse than the screeches of bloodthirsty monsters and wails of humans on the brink of death, desperately begging for their lives. It's too quiet, too ghostly everywhere. If he ever believed in anything remotely religious, then he's quite sure, that this is how purgatory would look like — a damned place between heaven and hell, nor living or dead, an eternity of anxious uncertainty.

A flicker of motion, a shadow against a sliver of light, catches Hyunsu's attention even through his closed eyelids. Since he's aware that they're in a somewhat secure area, Hyunsu suppresses the sudden sense of urgency zapping through his body and instead opens his eyes slowly, almost lazily to the bleak light. It's Eunyu. He watches with vague interest as her slim silhouette drifts around the neighboring rooftop, a piece of ingenious engineering that hasn't yet crumbled during the ongoing war against humanity.

She has been doing this for a while now. Her human memories coming and going like a fickle tide and when something sticks long enough Eunyu ends up imitating it, steadily, with almost surgical precision going through the motions, cataloging every move and sensation inside her rewired mind.

Eunyu must have felt his stare, as she looks up, eyes grave and bottomless, lips faintly parted. She lowers her arms, letting them hang limply at her sides and gradually, limb by limb, turns her body around. The debris crunches lazily under her worn sneakers.

Eunyu looks detachedly at Hyunsu for a few seconds, face expressionless, and then tilts her head to the side in perfect imitation of curiosity.

She looks human, and yet—

Ignoring the pinch in his gut, Hyunsu smiles at her gently from afar. He's afraid to break the brittle illusion of normality and overwhelm her with everything he's feeling at the mere sight of her — everything she embodies; a wild force he once thought couldn't be crushed; a frail beginning that shouldn't be possible. And for a moment his mind gets caught between their strange existence, the long ago abandoned dreams that would make no sense in this fucked up world and the recurring everyday nightmares, a goading voice constantly whispering at the back of his mind.

What if? 

What if they all had died? 

What if Hyunsu had been the one to kill them? 

What if everything is just an illusion inside his head?

Eunyu simply keeps staring at him, waiting, observing. She doesn't understand, can't read the emotions crashing across his face that's smeared with sweat and grime and dust. There are whole cities out there covered in dust — and blood. There's so much blood. Hyunsu can't get rid of it beneath his fingernails. No matter how much he scrubs and scratches at it in echoey bathrooms of abandoned buildings with hysterical sobs bubbling up inside his chest and manic laughter resounding in his ears, it's still there, deeply imbedded into his skin. Some nights he wakes up in cold sweat with a sour, metallic taste in his mouth from choking on gallons of lukewarm blood in his dreams, and needs to remind himself that he's no longer at the underground research facility, that all of it is over.

There is no government or politics, no military. No rules or even a society. All that's left is grueling survival for those who lived, huddling in the shadow of a new species.

Other nights he can't find his way out of his nightmares.

The forced smile slips slowly off Hyunsu's face. Perhaps it's better to be dead in this world, after all. 

The monster inside of him doesn't disagree.

A chilly breeze chases through the hollow high-rise structure with a faint howl in the prolonged moment that unyieldingly stretches between them, cruelly trapping them in its deafening silence. The wind ruffles through Hyunsu's overgrown bangs, tugging on an edge of Eunyu's plaid skirt — god knows where she managed to scavenge it. With her hair loose and skin free of infected wounds and puckered up, unkind scars, Eunyu looks so much alike the first time he saw her on the roof of Green Home apartments, yet so very different. A bit older. Impersonal. Nothing but a perfect shell of her former self.

A nasty shiver rushes down Hyunsu's spine, prickling uncomfortably at his lower back and he averts his eyes before he crumbles under the weight of her placid gaze, under the painful twist of guilt in his gut.

No matter what, he should've done better. Should've fought harder to protect, to bring the people he cares about back from the brink of madness, before their personalities — their whole souls were sucked into the void.

But not everyone could be saved, and not everyone wanted to.

Hyunsu's shoulders hunch up as he casts his gaze down, blinking back the burn in his eyes, heart racing. He knows. He knows that Eunyu has a long way to go before she can even begin piecing together the broken shards of her lost humanity. She's not a completely lost cause. There are worse; people that can't sate their monstrous sized desire, forever lost in a fever dream; peaceful monsters that are killed ruthlessly before they even get a chance to return. It's just Hyunsu's own fault that he keeps foolishly forgetting about it. Each time their eyes lock he expects to find closely guarded fierceness and a smidge of familiar arrogance, perhaps sorrow imbedded deep within her brown gaze, a flicker of affection, a bit of teenage insecurity and rebelliousness.

However, there's nothing.

Just peace and serenity. No desire. No warmth.

Debris crunches under a pair of heavy booths and there's soon a familiar presence at his side, a cool hand on the curve of his tense shoulder. It's Eunhyuk.

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